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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Reynard the Fox, by John Masefield
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Reynard the Fox
+
+Author: John Masefield
+
+Illustrator: Carton Moorepark
+
+Release Date: November 18, 2011 [EBook #38052]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REYNARD THE FOX ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judith Wirawan, Juliet Sutherland, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  REYNARD THE FOX
+
+
+  [Illustration: Publisher's emblem]
+
+  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+  NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
+  ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+  MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+
+  LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
+  MELBOURNE
+
+
+  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+  TORONTO
+
+
+[Illustration: Frontispiece: First colored plate _Courtesy Arthur
+Ackermann and Son, New York_]
+
+
+
+
+  REYNARD THE FOX
+
+  BY
+
+  JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+
+  NEW EDITION WITH EIGHT PLATES IN COLOUR AND
+  MANY ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+  CARTON MOOREPARK
+
+  [Illustration: Ex libris Reynards]
+
+  New York
+  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+  1920
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1919 AND 1920,
+  BY JOHN MASEFIELD.
+
+  New illustrated edition, October, 1920.
+
+
+  Norwood Press
+  J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+  Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+I have been asked to write why I wrote this poem of "Reynard the Fox."
+As a man grows older, life becomes more interesting but less easy to
+know; for, late in life, even the strongest yields to the habit of his
+compartment. When he cannot range through all society, from the court to
+the gutter, a man must go where all society meets, as at the Pilgrimage,
+the Festival or the Game. Here in England the Game is both a festival
+and an occasion of pilgrimage. A man wanting to set down a picture of
+the society of England will find his models at the games.
+
+What are the English games? The man's game is Association football; the
+woman's game, perhaps, hockey or lacrosse. Golf I regard more as a
+symptom of a happy marriage than a game. Cricket, which was once widely
+popular among both sexes has lost its hold, except among the young. The
+worst of all these games is that few can play them at a time.
+
+But in the English country, during the autumn, winter and early spring
+of each year, the main sport is fox hunting, which is not like cricket
+or football, a game for a few and a spectacle for many, but something in
+which all who come may take a part, whether rich or poor, mounted or on
+foot. It is a sport loved and followed by both sexes, all ages and all
+classes. At a fox hunt, and nowhere else in England, except perhaps at
+a funeral, can you see the whole of the land's society brought together,
+focussed for the observer, as the Canterbury pilgrims were for Chaucer.
+
+This fact made the subject attractive. The fox hunt gave an opportunity
+for a picture or pictures of the members of an English community.
+
+Then to all Englishmen who have lived in a hunting country, hunting is
+in the blood, and the mind is full of it. It is the most beautiful and
+the most stirring sight to be seen in England. In the ports, as at
+Falmouth, there are ships under sail, under way, coming or going,
+beautiful unspeakably. In the country, especially on the great fields on
+the lower slopes of the Downland, the teams of the ploughmen may be seen
+bowing forward on a sky-line, and this sight can never fail to move one
+by its majesty of beauty. But in neither of these sights of beauty is
+there the bright colour and swift excitement of the hunt, nor the thrill
+of the horn, and the cry of the hounds ringing into the elements of the
+soul. Something in the hunt wakens memories hidden in the marrow, racial
+memories, of when one hunted for the tribe, animal memories, perhaps, of
+when one hunted with the pack, or was hunted.
+
+Hunting has always been popular here in England. In ancient times it was
+necessary. Wolves, wild boar, foxes and deer had to be kept down. To
+hunt was then the social duty of the mounted man, when he was not
+engaged in war. It was also the opportunity of all other members of the
+community to have a good time in the open, with a feast or a new fur at
+the end, to crown the pleasure.
+
+Since arms of precision were made, hunting on horseback with hounds has
+perhaps been unnecessary everywhere, but it is not easy to end a
+pleasure rooted in the instincts of men. Hunting has continued, and
+probably will continue, in this country and in Ireland. It is rapidly
+becoming a national sport in the United States.
+
+Some have written, that hunting is the sport of the wealthy man. Some
+wealthy men hunt, no doubt, but they are not the backbone of the sport,
+so much as those who love and use horses. Parts of this country, of
+Ireland and of the United States are more than ordinarily good pasture,
+fitted for the breeding of horses, beyond most other places in the
+world. Hardly anywhere else is the climate so equable, the soil so right
+for the feet of colts and the grass so good. Where these conditions
+exist, men will breed horses and use them. Men who breed good horses
+will ride, jump and test them, and will invent means of riding, jumping
+and testing them, the steeplechase, the circus, the contests at fairs
+and shows, the point-to-point meeting, and they will preserve, if
+possible, any otherwise dying sport which offers such means.
+
+I have mentioned several reasons why fox hunting should be popular:
+(_a_) that it is a social business, at which the whole community may and
+does attend in vast numbers in a pleasant mood of goodwill, good humour
+and equality, and during which all may go anywhere, into ground
+otherwise shut to them; (_b_) that it is done in the winter, at a
+season when other social gatherings are difficult, and in country
+districts where no buildings, except the churches, could contain the
+numbers assembled; (_c_) that it is most beautiful to watch, so
+beautiful that perhaps very few of the acts of men can be so lovely to
+watch nor so exhilarating. The only thing to be compared with it, in
+this country, is the sword dance, the old heroical dancing of the young
+men, still practised, in all its splendour of wild beauty, in some
+country places; (_d_) that we are a horse-loving people who have loved
+horses as we have loved the sea, and have made, in the course of
+generations, a breed of horse, second to none in the world, for beauty
+and speed.
+
+But besides all these reasons, there is another that brings many out
+hunting. This is the delight in hunting, in the working of hounds, by
+themselves, or with the huntsmen, to find and kill their fox. Though
+many men and women hunt in order to ride, many still ride in order to
+hunt.
+
+Perhaps this delight in hunting was more general in the mid-eighteenth
+century, when hounds were much slower than at present. Then, the hunt
+was indeed a test of hounds and huntsman. The fox was not run down but
+hunted down. The great run then was that in which hounds and huntsman
+kept to their fox. The great run now is perhaps that in which some few
+riders keep with the hounds.
+
+The ideal run of 1750 might have been described thus:--
+
+"Being in the current of Writing, I cannot but acquaint your Lorp of ye
+great Hunt there was, this Tuesday last there was a a Week. Sure so
+great a day has not been seen here since The Day your Lorp's Father
+broke his Collar Bone at ye Park Wall. As Milton says:--
+
+    "Well have we speeded, and o'er Hill and Dale
+    Forest and Field and Flood ...
+    As far as Indus east, Euphrates west."
+
+"We had but dismle Weather of it, and so cold, as made Sir Harry
+observe, that it was an ill wind blew no-one any good. We met at ye
+Tailings. I had out my brown Horse. There was present Sir Anthony
+Smoaker; Mr. Jarvis of Copse Stile; William Travis; John Hawbuck; your
+Lorp's Friend, Dick Fancowe, and two of ye Red Coats from ye Barracks.
+Ye fair Sex was dismayed, it was said, by ye rudeness of ye Elements;
+they did not venture it.
+
+"On coming to draw Tailings Wood, Glider spoke to it, and Tom viewed him
+away for the Valley, being the old Dog Fox, with the white Mask, that
+beat us at Fubb's Field, the day your Lorp road Bluebell.
+
+    "Now spoke the chearful Horn; and tuneful Hounds
+    Echoed, and Red Coats gallopped; stirring Scean,
+    Rude Health and Manly Wit together strive.
+
+"We went with the extream of Violence from Tailings Wood to ye small
+Coppice at Nap Hill where a Fellow put him from his Point, which gave
+Occasion to Sir Anthony to correct him. Ye little magpie Hound made it
+out in ye bog at ye back of ye Coppice, when again Hounds went at head
+through Long Stone Pastures as far as Tainton. Here we was delayed in ye
+Dear Park, the effluvia of ye Dear being extream strong and doubtless
+puzzling to the Noses of ye Hounds. And here I cannot but remark the
+skill with which ye Hounds worked it out till they had hit it off, a
+sight, as Mr. Jarvis remarked to me, worthy of the Admiration of an
+antient Philosopher, and of the eloquence of a most elegant Wit, or
+Poet. Leaving ye Dear Park, He made for Norton Cross, which he left on
+his left Hand, as though deciding for ye Hill. Crossing ye Hill, in
+Spite of ye Sheep, he was a little staggered by his being run by one of
+ye Shepherd's Doggs, a part of Creation that should not be tolerated,
+except in ye vision of ye Poet, as in a Pastoral or so. Here Joe
+Phillips, our Huntsman, made unavailing Casts, but by lifting to the
+Vineyard recovered him, when Hounds run him to Cow's Crookham, on your
+Lorp's Aston Estate.
+
+"By this Time, your Lorp will understand our Distress. Dick Fancowe was
+in ye Brook at Norton, Mr. Jarvis' grey Horse had cast a Shoe, and one
+of ye Red Coats had broak his Liver in falling at a Fence. For a time we
+went about to recover him:--
+
+    "Now with attentive Nose the restless Hound
+    Endeavours on the Scent, now here, now there,
+    Scorning adulterat scents of lesser Prey.
+    Now gloomy care invades the Huntsman's Face;
+    And Sportsmen (jovial erst) on weary steeds
+    Sit pensive."
+
+Here might well be seen the Advantages of a judicious Breeding in
+Hounds, that neglects not the intellectual Part, but aims rather at a
+complete Animal than alone at Sinews and Corporeal Structure. That Blood
+of the Old Berkshire Glorious, which your Lorp's Father was wont to
+observe, was what he most stood by, next to our Constitution and the
+Protestant Succession, here stood us in good stead, for it was to
+Glorious ye Ninth, as well as to Growler and Glider (all of ye same
+royal strain) that we was indebted to ye happy Conclusion. They pushed
+him out of ye Stubbings at Cow's Crookham, where it seems he had taken
+Refuge in the Hollow of a decayed Tree. We chac't him thence upon ye
+Grass to Shepherd's Hey. Here he began to run short, being not a little
+apprehensive, lest his Foes should triumph, and snatch from him that
+Life, which he had so long nefariously pampered.
+
+    On courtly Cock with all his household Train
+    Of Hens obsequious, by the Hen Wife mourned.
+
+"The Sun, coming out from among ye Clouds, where he had been too long
+hid, made (as was elegantly pretended by Sir Anthony), a Brightness,
+animating indeed to us, who carried the Sword of Justice, but, to the
+Criminal of our Pursuit, infinitely distressing. Then had your Lorp seen
+the gay Ardor of the Pack, as they came to the View, which they did
+about Stonepits, your Lorp would have said with the late elegant Poet:
+
+    "Now o'er the glittering grass the sinewy Hound
+    Shakes from his Feet the Dew and makes ye Woods resound."
+
+"To be brief, we killed in the Back Yard of ye Rummer and Glass after
+two and three quarters Hours of a Hunt such as (all are agreed) is not
+lightly to be parallelled. There was present at ye Death, beside Joe
+Phillips and Tom, Sir A. Smoaker, Mr. Wm. Travis and myself, all so
+extream distresst, Men and Beasts, that it was observed, it was a Marvel
+ye Horses were not dead. Such an Hunt, it was agreed, should be
+celebrated by an annual Dinner, at which the Toast of ye Chase might be
+rendered more than ordinary. Ye Hunt was upwards of Fifteen Miles in
+Length, and hath been the Subject of a Song, by a Member of Ye Hunt,
+which, as it would take long to transcribe, I forbear, hoping that we
+may sing it to your Lorp before (as ye Poet says)
+
+        "Ye vixen hath laid up her Cubs
+    In snuggest Cave secure, when balmy Spring
+    Wakens ye Meadows."
+
+"But to pass now from Celestial Pleasures to Worldly Cares, I have to
+acquaint your Lorp that your Lorp's Sister's Son, Mr. Parracombe, hath
+been killed by a Fall from his Horse, after Dinner with some Gentlemen,
+his particular Friends, an Affliction indeed great, humanly regarded,
+were it not also considered, how much happier his Lot must be, than in
+this Vale of Tears, etc. Ye Young Hounds thrive apace, and it is thought
+the forward Season will be very favourable for their future Prey. I am,
+your Lorp's most obedient, Charles Cothill."
+
+Perhaps the ideal run of the present time would be described as
+follows:--
+
+"A large field attended the Templecombe on Tuesday last at the popular
+meet at Heydigates. Will Mynors, late of the Parratts, carried the horn,
+in place of Tom Carling, now with Mr. Fletchers. A little time was spent
+in running through the shrubberies in the garden at Heydigates and then
+the word was given for the Cantlows. Will had no sooner put hounds into
+this famous cover than the dog pack proclaimed the joyous news. The fox,
+a traveller, was at once viewed away for the Three Oaks, across the
+rather heavy going of the pasture land. Coming to the Knock Brook, he
+swam it near Parson's Pleasure, going at a pace that let the knowing
+ones know that they were in for something out of the common. Keeping
+Snib's Farm on his right, he ran dead straight for Gallow's Wood, where
+some woodmen with their teams disturbed him. Swinging to his left, he
+went up the hill, through Bloody Lane, as though towards Dinsmore, but
+was again deflected by woodmen. Turning down the hill, he ran for the
+valley, passing Enderton Schoolhouse, the scholars of which were much
+cheered by the near prospect of the hunt. It was now evident that he was
+going for the Downs. Some of the less daring began to express the hope
+that he might be headed.
+
+"Scent from the first was burning and the pace a cracker. After leaving
+Enderton he made straight for the Danesway, past Snub's Titch and the
+Curlews, the green meadows of the pasture being sprinkled for miles with
+the relics of the field. He crossed the Roman Road at Orm's Oak and at
+once entered the Danesway, going at a pace which all thought could not
+last.
+
+"At the summit of the Danesway, known as the Gallows Point, hounds were
+brought to their noses, owing to the crossing of the line by sheep. A
+man working nearby was able to give the line and Will, lifting beyond
+the Lynchets, at once hit him off, and the hounds resumed their rush.
+From this point, they went almost exactly straight from the head of the
+Danesway to the fir copse by Arthur's Table. All this part of the run
+being across a rolling grass land, was at top speed, such as no horse
+could live with. At Arthur's Table, he was put from his earth by
+shooters who were netting the warren. As he could not get through them
+nor across the highway, then busy with traffic, He doubled down across
+the Starvings, where Will, the only man up at this point, although now
+three hundred yards behind hounds, caught sight of him on the opposite
+slope, romping away from hounds as though he would never grow old. On
+coming to the level, past Spinney's End, some of those who had been left
+at the Lynchets were able to rejoin, but were soon again cast out by the
+extreme violence of the going, which continued back across the Downs on
+a line obliquely parallel with his former track though a mile further to
+the south. It was supposed that he was going for the main earth in
+Bloody Acre Copse. Some workers in the strip at the edge of the copse
+headed him from this point. He swung left-handed past Staves acre, and
+so down to the valley by the shelving ground near Monk's Charwell. Here,
+for some unaccountable reason, the scent, which had been breast high,
+became catchy, and hounds lost their fox in the Osier cars at Charwell
+Springs. Later in the afternoon, while jogging home, a second fox was
+chopped in Mr. Parsloe's cover at Prince's Charwell. Hounds then went
+home.
+
+"The run from the Cantlows was not remarkable for any quality of
+hunting, but extremely so for pace and length. The distance run, from
+Cantlows Wood to the Osiers cannot have been less than thirteen miles,
+most of it indeed on the best going in the world, but at a racing pace,
+with nothing that can be called a check, the whole way. Some wished that
+the hounds might have been rewarded and others that Will Mynors might
+have crowned his opening gallop with a kill, but the general feeling was
+one of satisfaction that so game a fox escaped."
+
+My own interest in fox hunting began at a very early age. I was born in
+a good hunting country, partly woodland, partly pasture. My home, during
+my first seven years, was within half a mile of the kennels. I saw
+hounds on most days of my life. Hounds and hunting filled my
+imagination. I saw many meets, each as romantic as a circus. The
+huntsman and whipper-in seemed, then, to be the greatest men in the
+world, and those mild slaves, the hounds, the loveliest animals.
+
+Often, as a little child, I saw and heard hounds hunting in and near a
+covert within sight of my old home. Once, when I was, perhaps, five
+years old, the fox was hunted into our garden, and those glorious beings
+in scarlet, as well as the hounds, were all about my lairs, like
+visitants from Paradise. The fox, on this occasion, went through a
+woodshed and escaped.
+
+Later in my childhood, though I lived less near to the kennels, I was
+still within a mile of them, and saw hounds frequently at all seasons.
+In that hunting country, hunting was one of the interests of life;
+everybody knew about it, loved, followed, watched and discussed it. I
+went to many meets, and followed many hunts on foot. Each of these
+occasions is now distinct in my mind, with the colour and intensity of
+beauty. I saw many foxes starting off upon their runs, with the hounds
+close behind them. It was then that I learned to admire the ease and
+beauty of the speed of the fresh fox. That leisurely hurry, which romps
+away from the hardest trained and swiftest fox hounds without a visible
+effort, as though the hounds were weighted with lead, is the most lovely
+motion I have seen in an animal.
+
+No fox was the original of my Reynard, but as I was much in the woods as
+a boy I saw foxes fairly often, considering that they are night-moving
+animals. Their grace, beauty, cleverness, and secrecy always thrilled
+me. Then that kind of grin which the mask wears made me credit them with
+an almost human humour. I thought the fox a merry devil, though a bloody
+one. Then he is one against many, who keeps his end up, and lives, often
+snugly, in spite of the world. The pirate and the nightrider are nothing
+to the fox, for romance and danger. This way of life of his makes it
+difficult to observe him in a free state at close quarters.
+
+Once in the early spring in the very early morning, I saw a vixen
+playing with her cubs in the open space below a beech tree. Once I came
+upon a big dog-fox in a wheel-wright's yard, and watched him from within
+a few paces for some minutes. Twice I have watched half-grown cubs
+stalking rabbits. Twice out hunting, the fox has broken cover within
+three yards of me. These are the only free foxes which I have seen at
+close quarters. Foxes are night-moving animals. To know them well one
+should have cat's eyes and foxes' habits. By the imagination alone can
+men know foxes.
+
+When I was about halfway through my poem, I found a dead dog-fox in a
+field near Cumnor Hurst. He was a fine full-grown fox in perfect
+condition; he must have picked up poison, for he had not been hunted,
+nor shot. On the pads of this dead fox, I noticed for the first time,
+the length and strength of a fox's claws.
+
+Some have asked, whether the Ghost Heath Run is founded on any recorded
+run of any real Hunt. It is not. It is an imaginary run, in a country
+made up of many different pieces of country, some of them real, some of
+them imaginary. These real and imaginary fields, woods and brooks are
+taken as they exist, from Berkshire, where the fox lives, from
+Herefordshire where he was found, from Trapalanda, Gloucestershire,
+Buckinghamshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Berkshire, where he
+ran, from Trapalanda, where he nearly died, and from a wild and
+beautiful corner in Berkshire where he rests from his run.
+
+Some have asked when the poem was written. It was written between
+January 1 and May 20, 1919.
+
+Some have asked, whether hunting will soon be abolished. I cannot tell,
+but I think it unlikely. People do not willingly resign their pleasures;
+men who breed horses will want to gallop them across country; hunting
+is a pleasure, as well as an opportunity to gallop; it is also an
+instinct in man. Some have thought that if "small holdings," that is
+"produce gardens," intensively cultivated, of about an acre apiece,
+became common, so that the country became more rigidly enclosed than at
+present, hunting would be made almost impossible. The small holding is
+generally the property of the small farmer (like the French cultivateur)
+who fences permanently with wire and cannot take down the wire during
+the hunting season, as most English farmers do at present. Small
+holdings will probably increase in number near towns, but farmers seem
+agreed that they can never become the national system of farming. The
+big farm, that can treat the great tract with machines, seems likely to
+be the farm of the future.
+
+Even if the small holdings system were to prevail, it would hardly
+prevail over the sporting instincts of the race. Beauty and delight are
+stronger than the will to work. I am pretty sure that a pack of hounds,
+coming feathery by, at the heels of a whip's horse, while the field
+takes station and the huntsman, drawing his horn, prepares to hunt,
+would shake the resolve of most small holders, digging in their lots
+with thrift, industry and self-control. And then, if the huntsman were
+to blow his horn, and the hounds to feather on it and give tongue, and
+find, and go away at head, I am pretty sure that most of the small
+holders of this race would follow them. It is in this race to hunt.
+
+I will conclude with a portrait of old Baldy Hill, the earth-stopper,
+who in the darkness of the early morning gads about on a pony, to
+"stop" or "put to" all earths, in which a hard-pressed fox might hide.
+In the poem, he enters when the hunt is about to start, but he is an
+important figure in a hunting community, and deserves a portrait. He may
+come here, at the beginning, for Baldy Hill is at the beginning of all
+fox hunts. He dates from the beginning of Man. I have seen many a Baldy
+Hill in my life; he never fails to give me the feeling that he is
+Primitive Man survived. Primitive Man lived like that, in the woods, in
+the darkness, outwitting the wild things, while the rain dripped, and
+the owl cried, and the ghost came out from the grave. Baldy Hill stole
+the last litter of the last she-wolf to cross them with the King's
+hounds. He was in at the death of the last wild-boar. Sometimes, in
+looking at him, I think that his ashen stake must have a flint head,
+with which, on moony nights, he still creeps out, to rouse, it may be,
+the mammoth in his secret valley, or a sabretooth tiger, still caved in
+the woods. Life may and does shoot out into exotic forms, which may and
+do flower and perish. Perhaps when all the other forms of English life
+are gone, the Baldy Hill form, the stock form, will abide, still
+striding, head bent, with an ashen stake, after some wild thing, that
+has meat, or fur, or is difficult or dangerous to tackle.
+
+    Old Baldy Hill, the game old cock,
+    Still wore knee-gaiters and a smock.
+    He bore a five foot ashen stick
+    All scarred and pilled from many a click
+    Beating in covert with his sons
+    To drive the pheasants to the guns.
+
+    His face was beaten by the weather
+    To wrinkled red like bellows leather
+    He had a cold clear hard blue eye.
+    His snares made many a rabbit die.
+    On moony nights he found it pleasant
+    To stare the woods for roosting pheasant
+    Up near the tree-trunk on the bough.
+
+    He never trod behind a plough.
+    He and his two sons got their food
+    From wild things in the field and wood,
+    By snares, by ferrets put in holes,
+    By ridding pasture-land of moles;
+    By keeping, beating, trapping, poaching
+    And spaniel-and-retriever-coaching.
+
+    He and his sons had special merits
+    In breeding and in handling ferrets
+    Full many a snaky hob and jill
+    Had bit the thumbs of Baldy Hill.
+    He had no beard, but long white hair.
+    He bent in gait. He used to wear
+    Flowers in his smock, gold-clocks and peasen;
+    And spindle-fruit in hunting season.
+
+I hope that he may live to wear spindle-fruit for many seasons to come.
+Hunting makes more people happy than anything I know. When people are
+happy together, I am quite certain that they build up something eternal,
+something both beautiful and divine, which weakens the power of all evil
+things upon this life of men and women.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+BY CARTON MOOREPARK
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+  The stables were alive with din                                    5
+
+  An old man with a gaunt, burnt face                               16
+
+  All sport, from bloody war to craps                               80
+
+  The Godsdown Tigress with her cub                                 96
+
+  A sea of moving heads, and sterns                                120
+
+  His chief delight                                                128
+
+  He had a welcome and salute                                      144
+
+  The scarlet coats twixt tree and spray                           153
+
+  And now they gathered to the gamble                              162
+
+  He saw the farms where the dogs were barking                     172
+
+  There he slept in the mild west weather                          182
+
+  The boy's sweet whistle and dog's quick yaps                     185
+
+  He faced the fence and put her through it                        222
+
+  A white horse rising a dark horse flying                         256
+
+  Then down the slope and up the road                              291
+
+  He ran the sheep that their smell might check                    295
+
+  With a cracking whip and "Hoik, Hoik, Hoik, Forrard"             303
+
+  He saw it now as a redness topped                                313
+
+  And man to man with a gasp for breath                            330
+
+  For with feet all bloody and flanks all foam                     336
+
+
+
+
+COLOR PLATES
+
+  First colored plate                                   _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+
+  Second colored plate                                              28
+
+  Third colored plate                                               86
+
+  Fourth colored plate                                             150
+
+  Fifth colored plate                                              210
+
+  Sixth colored plate                                              236
+
+  Seventh colored plate                                            250
+
+  Eighth colored plate                                             338
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE MEET
+
+
+
+
+REYNARD THE FOX,
+
+OR
+
+THE GHOST HEATH RUN
+
+
+    The meet was at "The Cock and Pye
+    By Charles and Martha Enderby,"
+    The grey, three-hundred-year-old inn
+    Long since the haunt of Benjamin
+    The highwayman, who rode the bay.
+    The tavern fronts the coaching way,
+    The mail changed horses there of old.
+    It has a strip of grassy mould
+    In front of it, a broad green strip.
+    A trough, where horses' muzzles dip,
+    Stands opposite the tavern front,
+    And there that morning came the hunt,
+    To fill that quiet width of road
+    As full of men as Framilode
+    Is full of sea when tide is in.
+
+    The stables were alive with din
+    From dawn until the time of meeting.
+    A pad-groom gave a cloth a beating,
+    Knocking the dust out with a stake.
+    Two men cleaned stalls with fork and rake,
+    And one went whistling to the pump,
+    The handle whined, ker-lump, ker-lump,
+    The water splashed into the pail,
+    And, as he went, it left a trail,
+    Lipped over on the yard's bricked paving.
+    Two grooms (sent on before) were shaving
+    There in the yard, at glasses propped
+    On jutting bricks; they scraped and stropped,
+    And felt their chins and leaned and peered,
+    A woodland day was what they feared
+    (As second horsemen), shaving there.
+    Then, in the stalls where hunters were,
+    Straw rustled as the horses shifted,
+    The hayseeds ticked and haystraws drifted
+    From racks as horses tugged their feed.
+    Slow gulping sounds of steady greed
+    Came from each stall, and sometimes stampings,
+    Whinnies (at well-known steps) and rampings
+    To see the horse in the next stall.
+
+[Illustration:
+The stables were alive with din
+From dawn until the time of meeting.]
+
+    Outside, the spangled cock did call
+    To scattering grain that Martha flung.
+    And many a time a mop was wrung
+    By Susan ere the floor was clean.
+    The harness room, that busy scene,
+    Clinked and chinked from ostlers brightening
+    Rings and bits with dips of whitening,
+    Rubbing fox-flecks out of stirrups,
+    Dumbing buckles of their chirrups
+    By the touch of oily feathers.
+    Some, with stag's bones rubbed at leathers,
+    Brushed at saddle-flaps or hove
+    Saddle linings to the stove.
+    Blue smoke from strong tobacco drifted
+    Out of the yard, the passers snifft it,
+    Mixed with the strong ammonia flavour
+    Of horses' stables and the savour
+    Of saddle-paste and polish spirit
+    Which put the gleam on flap and tirrit.
+    The grooms in shirts with rolled-up sleeves,
+    Belted by girths of coloured weaves,
+    Groomed the clipped hunters in their stalls.
+    One said, "My dad cured saddle galls,
+    He called it Doctor Barton's cure;
+    Hog's lard and borax, laid on pure."
+    And others said, "Ge' back, my son,"
+    "Stand over, girl; now, girl, ha' done."
+    "Now, boy, no snapping; gently. Crikes,
+    He gives a rare pinch when he likes."
+    "Drawn blood? I thought he looked a biter."
+    "I give 'em all sweet spit of nitre
+    For that, myself: that sometimes cures."
+    "Now, Beauty, mind them feet of yours."
+    They groomed, and sissed with hissing notes
+    To keep the dust out of their throats.
+
+[Illustration: The grooms in shirts with rolled-up sleeves]
+
+    There came again and yet again
+    The feed-box lid, the swish of grain,
+    Or Joe's boots stamping in the loft,
+    The hay-fork's stab and then the soft
+    Hay's scratching slither down the shoot.
+    Then with a thud some horse's foot
+    Stamped, and the gulping munch again
+    Resumed its lippings at the grain.
+
+    The road outside the inn was quiet
+    Save for the poor, mad, restless pyat
+    Hopping his hanging wicker-cage.
+    No calmative of sleep or sage
+    Will cure the fever to be free.
+    He shook the wicker ceaselessly
+    Now up, now down, but never out
+    On wind-waves, being blown about,
+    Looking for dead things good to eat.
+    His cage was strewn with scattered wheat.
+
+    At ten o'clock, the Doctor's lad
+    Brought up his master's hunting pad
+    And put him in a stall, and leaned
+    Against the stall, and sissed, and cleaned
+    The port and cannons of his curb.
+    He chewed a sprig of smelling herb.
+    He sometimes stopped, and spat, and chid
+    The silly things his master did.
+
+
+
+
+THE PLOUGHMAN
+
+
+    At twenty past, old Baldock strode
+    His ploughman's straddle down the road.
+    An old man with a gaunt, burnt face;
+    His eyes rapt back on some far place,
+    Like some starved, half-mad saint in bliss
+    In God's world through the rags of this.
+    He leaned upon a stake of ash
+    Cut from a sapling: many a gash
+    Was in his old, full-skirted coat.
+    The twisted muscles in his throat
+    Moved, as he swallowed, like taut cord.
+    His oaken face was seamed and gored.
+    He halted by the inn and stared
+    On that far bliss, that place prepared
+    Beyond his eyes, beyond his mind.
+
+[Illustration:
+An old man with a gaunt, burnt face;
+His eyes rapt back on some far place.]
+
+    Then Thomas Copp, of Cowfoot's Wynd
+    Drove up; and stopped to take a glass.
+    "I hope they'll gallop on my grass,"
+    He said, "My little girl does sing
+    To see the red coats galloping.
+    It's good for grass, too, to be trodden
+    Except they poach it, where it's sodden."
+    Then Billy Waldrist, from the Lynn,
+    With Jockey Hill, from Pitts, came in
+    And had a sip of gin and stout
+    To help the jockey's sweatings out.
+    "Rare day for scent," the jockey said.
+
+    A pony, like a feather bed
+    On four short sticks, took place aside.
+    The little girl who rode astride
+    Watched everything with eyes that glowed
+    With glory in the horse she rode.
+
+    At half-past ten, some lads on foot
+    Came to be beaters to a shoot
+    Of rabbits at the Warren Hill.
+    Rough sticks they had, and Hob and Jill,
+    Their ferrets, in a bag, and netting.
+    They talked of dinner-beer and betting;
+    And jeered at those who stood around.
+    They rolled their dogs upon the ground
+    And teased them: "Rats," they cried; "go fetch."
+    "Go seek, good Roxer; 'z bite, good betch.
+    What dinner-beer'll they give us, lad?
+    Sex quarts the lot last year we had.
+    They'd ought to give us seven this.
+    Seek, Susan; what a betch it is."
+
+
+
+
+THE CLERGYMAN
+
+
+[Illustration: The clergyman from Condicote]
+
+    A pommle cob came trotting up,
+    Round-bellied like a drinking-cup,
+    Bearing on back a pommle man
+    Round-bellied like a drinking-can.
+    The clergyman from Condicote.
+
+    His face was scarlet from his trot,
+    His white hair bobbed about his head
+    As halos do round clergy dead.
+    He asked Tom Copp, "How long to wait?"
+    His loose mouth opened like a gate
+    To pass the wagons of his speech,
+    He had a mighty voice to preach,
+    Though indolent in other matters,
+    He let his children go in tatters.
+
+    His daughter Madge on foot, flushed-cheekt,
+    In broken hat and boots that leakt,
+    With bits of hay all over her,
+    Her plain face grinning at the stir
+    (A broad pale face, snub-nosed, with speckles
+    Of sandy eyebrows sprinkt with freckles)
+    Came after him and stood apart
+    Beside the darling of her heart,
+    Miss Hattie Dyce from Baydon Dean;
+    A big young fair one, chiselled clean,
+    Brow, chin, and nose, with great blue eyes,
+    All innocence and sweet surprise,
+    And golden hair piled coil on coil
+    Too beautiful for time to spoil.
+    They talked in undertones together
+    Not of the hunting, nor the weather.
+    Old Steven, from Scratch Steven Place
+    (A white beard and a rosy face),
+    Came next on his stringhalty grey,
+    "I've come to see the hounds away,"
+    He said, "And ride a field or two.
+    We old have better things to do
+    Than breaking all our necks for fun."
+    He shone on people like the sun,
+    And on himself for shining so.
+    Three men came riding in a row:--
+    John Pyn, a bull-man, quick to strike,
+    Gross and blunt-headed like a shrike
+    Yet sweet-voiced as a piping flute;
+    Tom See, the trainer, from the Toot,
+    Red, with an angry, puzzled face
+    And mouth twitched upward out of place,
+    Sucking cheap grapes and spitting seeds;
+    And Stone, of Bartle's Cattle Feeds,
+    A man whose bulk of flesh and bone
+    Made people call him Twenty Stone.
+    He was the man who stood a pull
+    At Tencombe with the Jersey bull
+    And brought the bull back to his stall.
+
+[Illustration: Three men came riding in a row]
+
+    Some children ranged the tavern-wall,
+    Sucking their thumbs and staring hard;
+    Some grooms brought horses from the yard.
+    Jane Selbie said to Ellen Tranter,
+    "A lot on 'em come doggin', ant her?"
+    "A lot on 'em," said Ellen, "look
+    There'm Mister Gaunt of Water's Hook.
+    They say he" ... (whispered). "Law," said Jane.
+    Gaunt flung his heel across the mane,
+    And slithered from his horse and stamped.
+    "Boots tight," he said, "my feet are cramped."
+
+    A loose-shod horse came clicking clack;
+    Nick Wolvesey on a hired hack
+    Came tittup, like a cup and ball.
+    One saw the sun, moon, stars, and all
+    The great green earth twixt him and saddle;
+    Then Molly Wolvesey riding straddle,
+    Red as a rose, with eyes like sparks.
+    Two boys from college out for larks
+    Hunted bright Molly for a smile
+    But were not worth their quarry's while.
+
+[Illustration: Second colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son,
+New York_]
+
+    Two eyeglassed gunners dressed in tweed
+    Came with a spaniel on a lead
+    And waited for a fellow gunner.
+    The parson's son, the famous runner,
+    Came dressed to follow hounds on foot.
+    His knees were red as yew tree root
+    From being bare, day in day out;
+    He wore a blazer, and a clout
+    (His sweater's arms) tied round his neck.
+    His football shorts had many a speck
+    And splash of mud from many a fall
+    Got as he picked the slippery ball
+    Heeled out behind a breaking scrum.
+    He grinned at people, but was dumb,
+    Not like these lousy foreigners.
+    The otter-hounds and harriers
+    From Godstow to the Wye all knew him.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARSON
+
+
+    And with him came the stock which grew him--
+    The parson and his sporting wife,
+    She was a stout one, full of life
+    With red, quick, kindly, manly face.
+    She held the knave, queen, king, and ace
+    In every hand she played with men.
+    She was no sister to the hen,
+    But fierce and minded to be queen.
+    She wore a coat and skirt of green,
+    Her waistcoat cut of bunting red,
+    Her tie pin was a fox's head.
+
+    The parson was a manly one,
+    His jolly eyes were bright with fun.
+    His jolly mouth was well inclined
+    To cry aloud his jolly mind
+    To everyone, in jolly terms.
+    He did not talk of churchyard worms,
+    But of our privilege as dust
+    To box a lively bout with lust
+    Ere going to Heaven to rejoice.
+    He loved the sound of his own voice.
+    His talk was like a charge of horse;
+    His build was all compact, for force,
+    Well-knit, well-made, well-coloured, eager,
+    He kept no Lent to make him meagre.
+    He loved his God, himself and man.
+    He never said "Life's wretched span;
+    This wicked world," in any sermon.
+    This body, that we feed the worm on,
+    To him, was jovial stuff that thrilled.
+    He liked to see the foxes killed;
+    But most he felt himself in clover
+    To hear "Hen left, hare right, cock over,"
+    At woodside, when the leaves are brown.
+    Some grey cathedral in a town
+    Where drowsy bells toll out the time
+    To shaven closes sweet with lime,
+    And wall-flower roots drive out of the mortar
+    All summer on the Norman Dortar,
+    Was certain some day to be his.
+    Nor would a mitre go amiss
+    To him, because he governed well.
+    His voice was like the tenor bell
+    When services were said and sung.
+    And he had read in many a tongue,
+    Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Greek.
+
+
+
+
+"JILL AND JOAN"
+
+
+    Two bright young women, nothing meek,
+    Rode up on bicycles and propped
+    Their wheels in such wise that they dropped
+    To bring the parson's son to aid.
+    Their cycling suits were tailor-made,
+    Smart, mannish, pert, but feminine.
+    The colour and the zest of wine
+    Were in their presence and their bearing;
+    Like spring, they brought the thought of pairing.
+    The parson's lady thought them pert.
+    And they could mock a man and flirt,
+    Do billiard tricks with corks and pennies,
+    Sing ragtime songs and win at tennis
+    The silver-cigarette-case-prize.
+
+    They had good colour and bright eyes,
+    Bright hair, bright teeth and pretty skin,
+    On darkened stairways after dances,
+    Which many lads had longed to win.
+    Their reading was the last romances,
+    And they were dashing hockey players.
+    Men called them, "Jill and Joan, the slayers."
+    They were as bright as fresh sweet-peas.
+
+
+
+
+FARMER BENNETT
+
+
+[Illustration: Old Farmer Bennett upon his big-boned savage black]
+
+    Old Farmer Bennett followed these
+    Upon his big-boned savage black
+    Whose mule-teeth yellowed to bite back
+    Whatever came within his reach.
+    Old Bennett sat him like a leech.
+    The grim old rider seemed to be
+    As hard about the mouth as he.
+
+    The beaters nudged each other's ribs
+    With "There he goes, his bloody Nibs.
+    He come on Joe and Anty Cop,
+    And beat 'em with his hunting crop
+    Like tho' they'd bin a sack of beans.
+    His pickers were a pack of queans,
+    And Joe and Anty took a couple,
+    He caught 'em there, and banged 'em supple.
+    Women and men, he didn't care
+    (He'd kill 'em some day, if he dare),
+    He beat the whole four nearly dead.
+    'I'll learn 'ee rabbit in my shed,
+    That's how my ricks get set afire.'
+    That's what he said, the bloody liar;
+    Old oaf, I'd like to burn his ricks,
+    Th' old swine's too free with fists and sticks.
+    He keeps that Mrs. Jones himselve."
+
+    Just like an axehead on its helve
+    Old Bennett sat and watched the gathering.
+    He'd given many a man a lathering
+    In field or barn, and women, too.
+    His cold eye reached the women through
+    With comment, and the men with scorn.
+    He hated women gently born;
+    He hated all beyond his grasp;
+    For he was minded like the asp
+    That strikes whatever is not dust.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+
+    Charles Copse, of Copse Hold Manor, thrust
+    Next into view. In face and limb
+    The beauty and the grace of him
+    Were like the golden age returned.
+    His grave eyes steadily discerned
+    The good in men and what was wise.
+    He had deep blue, mild-coloured eyes,
+    And shocks of harvest-coloured hair,
+    Still beautiful with youth. An air
+    Or power of kindness went about him;
+    No heart of youth could ever doubt him
+    Or fail to follow where he led.
+    He was a genius, simply bred,
+    And quite unconscious of his power.
+
+    He was the very red rose flower
+    Of all that coloured countryside.
+    Gauchos had taught him how to ride.
+    He knew all arts, but practised most
+    The art of bettering flesh and ghost
+    In men and lads down in the mud.
+    He knew no class in flesh and blood.
+    He loved his kind. He spent some pith
+    Long since, relieving Ladysmith.
+    Many a horse he trotted tame,
+    Heading commandos from their aim,
+    In those old days upon the veldt.
+
+
+
+
+THE SQUIRE
+
+
+[Illustration: His daughters, Carrie, Jane, and Lu, rode with him]
+
+    An old bear in a scarlet pelt
+    Came next, old Squire Harridew,
+    His eyebrows gave a man the grue
+    So bushy and so fierce they were;
+    He had a bitter tongue to swear.
+    A fierce, hot, hard, old, stupid squire,
+    With all his liver made of fire,
+    Small brain, great courage, mulish will.
+    The hearts in all his house stood still
+    When someone crossed the squire's path.
+    For he was terrible in wrath,
+    And smashed whatever came to hand.
+    Two things he failed to understand,
+    The foreigner and what was new.
+
+    His daughters, Carrie, Jane and Lu,
+    Rode with him, Carrie at his side.
+    His son, the ne'er-do-weel, had died
+    In Arizona, long before.
+    The Squire set the greatest store
+    By Carrie, youngest of the three,
+    And lovely to the blood was she;
+    Blonde, with a face of blush and cream,
+    And eyes deep violet in their gleam,
+    Bright blue when quiet in repose.
+    She was a very golden rose.
+    And many a man when sunset came
+    Would see the manor windows flame,
+    And think, "My beauty's home is there."
+    Queen Helen had less golden hair,
+    Queen Cleopatra paler lips,
+    Queen Blanche's eyes were in eclipse,
+    By golden Carrie's glancing by.
+    She had a wit for mockery
+    And sang mild, pretty senseless songs
+    Of sunsets, Heav'n and lover's wrongs,
+    Sweet to the Squire when he had dined.
+    A rosebud need not have a mind.
+
+    A lily is not sweet from learning.
+    Jane looked like a dark lantern, burning.
+    Outwardly dark, unkempt, uncouth,
+    But minded like the living truth,
+    A friend that nothing shook nor wearied.
+    She was not "Darling Jan'd," nor "dearie'd,"
+    She was all prickles to the touch,
+    So sharp, that many feared to clutch,
+    So keen, that many thought her bitter.
+    She let the little sparrows twitter.
+    She had a hard ungracious way.
+    Her storm of hair was iron-grey,
+    And she was passionate in her heart
+    For women's souls that burn apart,
+    Just as her mother's had, with Squire.
+    She gave the sense of smouldering fire.
+    She was not happy being a maid,
+    At home, with Squire, but she stayed
+    Enduring life, however bleak,
+    To guard her sisters who were weak,
+    And force a life for them from Squire.
+    And she had roused and stood his fire
+    A hundred times, and earned his hate,
+    To win those two a better state.
+    Long years before the Canon's son
+    Had cared for her, but he had gone
+    To Klondyke, to the mines, for gold,
+    To find, in some strange way untold
+    A foreign grave that no men knew.
+
+    No depth, nor beauty, was in Lu,
+    But charm and fun, for she was merry,
+    Round, sweet and little like a cherry,
+    With laughter like a robin's singing;
+    She was not kittenlike and clinging,
+    But pert and arch and fond of flirting,
+    In mocking ways that were not hurting,
+    And merry ways that women pardoned.
+    Not being married yet she gardened.
+    She loved sweet music; she would sing
+    Songs made before the German King
+    Made England German in her mind.
+    She sang "My lady is unkind,"
+    "The Hunt is up," and those sweet things
+    Which Thomas Campion set to strings,
+    "Thrice toss," and "What," and "Where are now?"
+
+    The next to come was Major Howe
+    Driv'n in a dog-cart by a groom.
+    The testy major was in fume
+    To find no hunter standing waiting;
+    The groom who drove him caught a rating,
+    The groom who had the horse in stable,
+    Was damned in half the tongues of Babel.
+    The Major being hot and heady
+    When horse or dinner was not ready.
+    He was a lean, tough, liverish fellow,
+    With pale blue eyes (the whites pale yellow),
+    Mustache clipped toothbrush-wise, and jaws
+    Shaved bluish like old partridge claws.
+    When he had stripped his coat he made
+    A speckless presence for parade,
+    New pink, white cords, and glossy tops
+    New gloves, the newest thing in crops,
+    Worn with an air that well expressed
+    His sense that no one else was dressed.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTOR
+
+
+[Illustration: Came Doctor Frome of Quickemshow]
+
+    Quick trotting after Major Howe
+    Came Doctor Frome of Quickemshow,
+    A smiling silent man whose brain
+    Knew all of every secret pain
+    In every man and woman there.
+    Their inmost lives were all laid bare
+    To him, because he touched their lives
+    When strong emotions sharp as knives
+    Brought out what sort of soul each was.
+    As secret as the graveyard grass
+    He was, as he had need to be.
+    At some time he had had to see
+    Each person there, sans clothes, sans mask,
+    Sans lying even, when to ask
+    Probed a tamed spirit into truth.
+    Richard, his son, a jolly youth
+    Rode with him, fresh from Thomas's,
+    As merry as a yearling is
+    In maytime in a clover patch.
+    He was a gallant chick to hatch
+    Big, brown and smiling, blithe and kind,
+    With all his father's love of mind
+    And greater force to give it act.
+    To see him when the scrum was packt,
+    Heave, playing forward, was a sight.
+    His tackling was the crowd's delight
+    In many a danger close to goal.
+    The pride in the three quarter's soul
+    Dropped, like a wet rag, when he collared.
+    He was as steady as a bollard,
+    And gallant as a skysail yard.
+    He rode a chestnut mare which sparred.
+    In good St. Thomas' Hospital,
+    He was the crown imperial
+    Of all the scholars of his year.
+
+    The Harold lads, from Tencombe Weir,
+    Came all on foot in corduroys,
+    Poor widowed Mrs. Harold's boys,
+    Dick, Hal and Charles, whose father died.
+    (Will Masemore shot him in the side
+    By accident at Masemore Farm.
+    A hazel knocked Will Masemore's arm
+    In getting through a hedge; his gun
+    Was not half-cocked, so it was done
+    And those three boys left fatherless.)
+    Their gaitered legs were in a mess
+    With good red mud from twenty ditches
+    Hal's face was plastered like his breeches,
+    Dick chewed a twig of juniper.
+    They kept at distance from the stir
+    Their loss had made them lads apart.
+    Next came the Colway's pony cart
+    From Coln St. Evelyn's with the party,
+    Hugh Colway jovial, bold and hearty,
+    And Polly Colway's brother, John
+    (Their horses had been both sent on)
+    And Polly Colway drove them there.
+    Poor pretty Polly Colway's hair.
+    The grey mare killed her at the brook
+    Down Seven Springs Mead at Water Hook,
+    Just one month later, poor sweet woman.
+
+
+
+
+THE SAILOR
+
+
+    Her brother was a rat-faced Roman,
+    Lean, puckered, tight-skinned from the sea,
+    Commander in the _Canace_,
+    Able to drive a horse, or ship,
+    Or crew of men, without a whip
+    By will, as long as they could go.
+    His face would wrinkle, row on row,
+    From mouth to hair-roots when he laught
+    He looked ahead as though his craft
+    Were with him still, in dangerous channels.
+    He and Hugh Colway tossed their flannels
+    Into the pony-cart and mounted.
+    Six foiled attempts the watchers counted,
+    The horses being bickering things,
+    That so much scarlet made like kings,
+    Such sidling and such pawing and shifting.
+
+
+
+
+THE MERCHANT'S SON
+
+
+    When Hugh was up his mare went drifting
+    Sidelong and feeling with her heels
+    For horses' legs and poshay wheels,
+    While lather creamed her neat clipt skin.
+    Hugh guessed her foibles with a grin.
+    He was a rich town-merchant's son,
+    A wise and kind man fond of fun,
+    Who loved to have a troop of friends
+    At Coln St. Eves for all week-ends,
+    And troops of children in for tea,
+    He gloried in a Christmas Tree.
+    And Polly was his heart's best treasure,
+    And Polly was a golden pleasure
+    To everyone, to see or hear.
+    Poor Polly's dying struck him queer,
+    He was a darkened man thereafter,
+    Cowed silent, he would wince at laughter
+    And be so gentle it was strange
+    Even to see. Life loves to change.
+
+    Now Coln St. Evelyn's hearths are cold
+    The shutters up, the hunters sold,
+    And green mould damps the locked front door.
+    But this was still a month before,
+    And Polly, golden in the chaise,
+    Still smiled, and there were golden days,
+    Still thirty days, for those dear lovers.
+
+
+
+
+SPORTSMAN
+
+
+    The Riddens came, from Ocle Covers,
+    Bill Ridden riding Stormalong,
+    (By Tempest out of Love-me-long)
+    A proper handful of a horse,
+    That nothing but the Aintree course
+    Could bring to terms, save Bill perhaps.
+    All sport, from bloody war to craps,
+    Came well to Bill, that big-mouthed smiler;
+    They nick-named him "the mug-beguiler,"
+    For Billy lived too much with horses
+    In coper's yards and sharper's courses,
+    To lack the sharper-coper streak.
+    He did not turn the other cheek
+    When struck (as English Christians do),
+    He boxed like a Whitechapel Jew,
+    And many a time his knuckles bled
+    Against a race-course-gipsy's head.
+    For "hit him first and argue later"
+    Was truth at Billy's alma mater,
+    Not love, not any bosh of love.
+    His hand was like a chamois glove
+    And riding was his chief delight.
+    He bred the chaser Chinese-white,
+    From Lilybud by Mandarin.
+    And when his mouth tucked corners in,
+    And scent was high and hounds were going,
+    He went across a field like snowing
+    And tackled anything that came.
+
+[Illustration:
+All sport, from bloody war to craps,
+Came well to Bill, that big-mouthed smiler.]
+
+    His wife, Sal Ridden, was the same,
+    A loud, bold, blonde abundant mare,
+    With white horse teeth and stooks of hair,
+    (Like polished brass) and such a manner
+    It flaunted from her like a banner.
+    Her father was Tom See the trainer;
+    She rode a lovely earth-disdainer
+    Which she and Billy wished to sell.
+
+[Illustration: Behind them rode her daughter Bell]
+
+    Behind them rode her daughter Bell,
+    A strange shy lovely girl whose face
+    Was sweet with thought and proud with race,
+    And bright with joy at riding there.
+    She was as good as blowing air
+    But shy and difficult to know.
+    The kittens in the barley-mow,
+    The setter's toothless puppies sprawling,
+    The blackbird in the apple calling,
+    All knew her spirit more than we,
+    So delicate these maidens be
+    In loving lovely helpless things.
+
+    The Manor set, from Tencombe Rings,
+    Came, with two friends, a set of six.
+    Ed Manor with his cockerel chicks,
+    Nob, Cob and Bunny as they called them,
+    (God help the school or rule which galled them;
+    They carried head) and friends from town.
+
+[Illustration: The Manor set, from Tencombe Rings]
+
+    Ed Manor trained on Tencombe Down.
+    He once had been a famous bat,
+    He had that stroke, "the Manor-pat,"
+    Which snicked the ball for three, past cover.
+    He once scored twenty in an over,
+    But now he cricketed no more.
+    He purpled in the face and swore
+    At all three sons, and trained, and told
+    Long tales of cricketing of old,
+    When he alone had saved his side.
+    Drink made it doubtful if he lied,
+    Drink purpled him, he could not face
+    The fences now, nor go the pace
+    He brought his friends to meet; no more.
+
+    His big son Nob, at whom he swore,
+    Swore back at him, for Nob was surly,
+    Tall, shifty, sullen-smiling, burly,
+    Quite fearless, built with such a jaw
+    That no man's rule could be his law
+    Nor any woman's son his master.
+    Boxing he relished. He could plaster
+    All those who boxed out Tencombe way.
+    A front tooth had been knocked away
+    Two days before, which put his mouth
+    A little to the east of south.
+    And put a venom in his laughter.
+
+    Cob was a lighter lad, but dafter;
+    Just past eighteen, while Nob was twenty.
+    Nob had no nerves but Cob had plenty
+    So Cobby went where Nobby led.
+    He had no brains inside his head,
+    Was fearless, just like Nob, but put
+    Some clog of folly round his foot,
+    Where Nob put will of force or fraud;
+    He spat aside and muttered Gawd
+    When vext; he took to whiskey kindly
+    And loved and followed Nobby blindly,
+    And rode as in the saddle born.
+
+    Bun looked upon the two with scorn.
+    He was the youngest, and was wise.
+    He too was fair, with sullen eyes,
+    He too (a year before) had had
+    A zest for going to the bad,
+    With Cob and Nob. He knew the joys
+    Of drinking with the stable-boys,
+    Or smoking while he filled his skin
+    With pints of Guinness dashed with gin
+    And Cobby yelled a bawdy ditty,
+    Or cutting Nobby for the kitty,
+    And damning peoples' eyes and guts,
+    Or drawing evening-church for sluts,
+    He knew them all and now was quit.
+
+[Illustration: Third colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son,
+New York_]
+
+    Sweet Polly Colway managed it.
+    And Bunny changed. He dropped his drink
+    (The pleasant pit's seductive brink),
+    He started working in the stable,
+    And well, for he was shrewd and able.
+    He left the doubtful female friends
+    Picked up at Evening-Service ends,
+    He gave up cards and swore no more.
+    Nob called him "the Reforming Whore,"
+    "The Soul's Awakening," or "The Text,"
+    Nob being always coarse when vext.
+
+    Ed Manor's friends were Hawke and Sladd,
+    Old college friends, the last he had,
+    Rare horsemen, but their nerves were shaken
+    By all the whiskey they had taken.
+    Hawke's hand was trembling on his rein.
+    His eyes were dead-blue like a vein,
+    His peaked sad face was touched with breeding,
+    His querulous mind was quaint from reading,
+    His piping voice still quirked with fun.
+    Many a mad thing he had done,
+    Riding to hounds and going to races.
+    A glimmer of the gambler's graces,
+    Wit, courage, devil, touched his talk.
+
+[Illustration: Ed Manor's friends were Hawke and Sladd]
+
+    Sladd's big fat face was white as chalk,
+    His mind went wondering, swift yet solemn,
+    Twixt winning-post and betting column,
+    The weights and forms and likely colts.
+    He said "This road is full of jolts.
+    I shall be seasick riding here.
+    O damn last night with that liqueur."
+
+    Len Stokes rode up on Peterkin;
+    He owned the Downs by Baydon Whin;
+    And grazed some thousand sheep; the boy
+    Grinned round at men with jolly joy
+    At being alive and being there.
+    His big round face and mop of hair
+    Shone, his great teeth shone in his grin,
+    The clean blood in his clear tanned skin
+    Ran merry, and his great voice mocked
+    His young friends present till they rocked.
+
+    Steer Harpit came from Rowell Hill,
+    A small, frail man, all heart and will,
+    A sailor as his voice betrayed.
+    He let his whip-thong droop and played
+    At snicking off the grass-blades with it,
+    John Hankerton, from Compton Lythitt,
+    Was there with Pity Hankerton,
+    And Mike, their good-for-little son,
+    Back, smiling, from his seventh job.
+    Joan Urch was there upon her cob.
+    Tom Sparsholt on his lanky grey.
+    John Restrop from Hope Goneaway.
+    And Vaughan, the big black handsome devil,
+    Loose-lipped with song and wine and revel
+    All rosy from his morning tub
+
+
+
+
+THE EXQUISITE
+
+
+    The Godsdown tigress with her cub
+    (Lady and Tommy Crowmarsh) came.
+    The great eyes smouldered in the dame,
+    Wit glittered, too, which few men saw.
+    There was more beauty there than claw.
+    Tommy in bearing, horse and dress
+    Was black, fastidious, handsomeness,
+    Choice to his trimmed soul's fingertips.
+    Heredia's sonnets on his lips.
+    A line undrawn, a plate not bitten,
+    A stone uncut, a phrase unwritten,
+    That would be perfect, made his mind.
+    A choice pull, from a rare print, signed,
+    Was Tommy. He collected plate,
+    (Old sheffield) and he owned each state
+    Of all the Meryon Paris etchings.
+
+[Illustration:
+The Godsdown Tigress with her cub
+(Lady and Tommy Crowmarsh) came.]
+
+    Colonel Sir Button Budd of Fletchings
+    Was there; Long Robert Thrupp was there,
+    (Three yards of him men said there were),
+    Long as the King of Prussia's fancy.
+    He rode the longlegged Necromancy,
+    A useless racehorse that could canter.
+    George Childrey with his jolly banter
+    Was there, Nick Childrey, too, come down
+    The night before from London town,
+    To hunt and have his lungs blown clean.
+    The Ilsley set from Tuttocks Green
+    Was there (old Henry Ilsley drove),
+    Carlotta Ilsley brought her love
+    A flop-jowled broker from the city.
+    Men pitied her, for she was pretty.
+
+    Some grooms and second horsemen mustered.
+    A lot of men on foot were clustered
+    Round the inn-door, all busy drinking,
+    One heard the kissing glasses clinking
+    In passage as the tray was brought.
+    Two terriers (which they had there) fought
+    There on the green, a loud, wild whirl.
+    Bell stopped them like a gallant girl.
+    The hens behind the tavern clucked.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOLDIER
+
+
+[Illustration: Came Minton-Price of th' Afghan border]
+
+    Then on a horse which bit and bucked
+    (The half-broke four-year-old Marauder)
+    Came Minton-Price of th' Afghan border,
+    Lean, puckered, yellowed, knotted, scarred,
+    Tough as a hide-rope twisted hard,
+    Tense tiger-sinew knit to bone.
+    Strange-wayed from having lived alone
+    With Kafir, Afghan and Beloosh
+    In stations frozen in the Koosh
+    Where nothing but the bullet sings.
+    His mind had conquered many things,
+    Painting, mechanics, physics, law,
+    White-hot, hand-beaten things to draw
+    Self-hammered from his own soul's stithy,
+    His speech was blacksmith-sparked and pithy.
+    Danger had been his brother bred;
+    The stones had often been his bed
+    In bickers with the border-thieves.
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY'S HOPE
+
+
+    A chestnut mare with swerves and heaves
+    Came plunging, scattering all the crowd,
+    She tossed her head and laughed aloud
+    And bickered sideways past the meet.
+    From pricking ears to mincing feet
+    She was all tense with blood and quiver,
+    You saw her clipt hide twitch and shiver
+    Over her netted cords of veins.
+    She carried Cothill, of the Sleins;
+    A tall, black, bright-eyed handsome lad.
+    Great power and great grace he had.
+    Men hoped the greatest things of him,
+    His grace made people think him slim,
+    But he was muscled like a horse
+    A sculptor would have wrought his torse
+    In bronze or marble for Apollo.
+    He loved to hurry like a swallow
+    For miles on miles of short-grassed sweet
+    Blue-harebelled downs where dewy feet
+    Of pure winds hurry ceaselessly.
+    He loved the downland like a sea,
+    The downland where the kestrels hover;
+    The downland had him for a lover.
+    And every other thing he loved
+    In which a clean free spirit moved.
+
+    So beautiful, he was, so bright.
+    He looked to men like young delight
+    Gone courting April maidenhood,
+    That has the primrose in her blood,
+    He on his mincing lady mare.
+
+
+
+
+COUNTRYMEN
+
+
+[Illustration: Ock Gurney and old Pete were there]
+
+    Ock Gurney and old Pete were there,
+    Riding their bonny cobs and swearing.
+    Ock's wife had giv'n them both a fairing,
+    A horse-rosette, red, white and blue.
+    Their cheeks were brown as any brew,
+    And every comer to the meet
+    Said "Hello, Ock," or "Morning, Pete;
+    Be you a going to a wedding?"
+    "Why, noa," they said, "we'm going a bedding;
+    Now ben't us, uncle, ben't us, Ock?"
+    Pete Gurney was a lusty cock
+    Turned sixty-three, but bright and hale,
+    A dairy-farmer in the vale,
+    Much like a robin in the face,
+    Much character in little space,
+    With little eyes like burning coal.
+    His mouth was like a slit or hole
+    In leather that was seamed and lined.
+    He had the russet-apple mind
+    That betters as the weather worsen.
+    He was a manly English person,
+    Kind to the core, brave, merry, true;
+    One grief he had, a grief still new,
+    That former Parson joined with Squire
+    In putting down the Playing Quire,
+    In church, and putting organ in.
+    "Ah, boys, that was a pious din
+    That Quire was; a pious praise
+    The noise was that we used to raise;
+    I and my serpent, George with his'n,
+    On Easter Day in He is Risen,
+    Or blessed Christmas in Venite;
+    And how the trombone came in mighty,
+    In Alleluias from the heart.
+    Pious, for each man played his part,
+    Not like 'tis now." Thus he, still sore
+    For changes forty years before,
+    When all (that could) in time and tune,
+    Blew trumpets to the newe moon.
+    He was a bachelor, from choice.
+    He and his nephew farmed the Boyce
+    Prime pasture land for thirty cows.
+    Ock's wife, Selina Jane, kept house,
+    And jolly were the three together.
+    Ock had a face like summer weather,
+    A broad red sun, split by a smile.
+    He mopped his forehead all the while,
+    And said "By damn," and "Ben't us, Unk?"
+    His eyes were close and deeply sunk.
+    He cursed his hunter like a lover,
+    "Now blast your soul, my dear, give over.
+    Woa, now, my pretty, damn your eyes."
+    Like Pete he was of middle size,
+    Dean-oak-like, stuggy, strong in shoulder,
+    He stood a wrestle like a boulder,
+    He had a back for pitching hay.
+    His singing voice was like a bay.
+    In talk he had a sideways spit,
+    Each minute, to refresh his wit.
+    He cracked Brazil nuts with his teeth.
+    He challenged Cobbett of the Heath
+    (Weight-lifting champion) once, but lost.
+    Hunting was what he loved the most,
+    Next to his wife and Uncle Pete.
+    With beer to drink and cheese to eat,
+    And rain in May to fill the grasses,
+    This life was not a dream that passes
+    To Ock, but like the summer flower.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUNDS
+
+
+    But now the clock had struck the hour,
+    And round the corner, down the road
+    The bob-bob-bobbing serpent flowed
+    With three black knobs upon its spine;
+    Three bobbing black-caps in a line.
+    A glimpse of scarlet at the gap
+    Showed underneath each bobbing cap,
+    And at the corner by the gate,
+    One heard Tom Dansey give a rate,
+    "Hep, Drop it, Jumper; have a care,"
+    There came a growl, half-rate, half-swear,
+    A spitting crack, a tuneful whimper
+    And sweet religion entered Jumper.
+
+    There was a general turn of faces,
+    The men and horses shifted places,
+    And round the corner came the hunt,
+    Those feathery things, the hounds, in front,
+    Intent, wise, dipping, trotting, straying,
+    Smiling at people, shoving, playing,
+    Nosing to children's faces, waving
+    Their feathery sterns, and all behaving,
+    One eye to Dansey on Maroon.
+    Their padding cat-feet beat a tune,
+    And though they trotted up so quiet
+    Their noses brought them news of riot,
+    Wild smells of things with living blood,
+    Hot smells, against the grippers good,
+    Of weasel, rabbit, cat and hare,
+    Whose feet had been before them there,
+    Whose taint still tingled every breath;
+    But Dansey on Maroon was death,
+    So, though their noses roved, their feet
+    Larked and trit-trotted to the meet.
+
+    Bill Tall and Ell and Mirtie Key
+    (Aged fourteen years between the three)
+    Were flooded by them at the bend,
+    They thought their little lives would end,
+    For grave sweet eyes looked into theirs,
+    Cold noses came, and clean short hairs
+    And tails all crumpled up like ferns,
+    A sea of moving heads and sterns,
+    All round them, brushing coat and dress;
+    One paused, expecting a caress.
+    The children shrank into each other,
+    Shut eyes, clutched tight and shouted "Mother"
+    With mouths wide open, catching tears.
+
+[Illustration:
+A sea of moving heads and sterns,
+All round them, brushing coat and dress.]
+
+    Sharp Mrs. Tall allayed their fears,
+    "Err out the road, the dogs won't hurt 'ee.
+    There now, you've cried your faces dirty.
+    More cleaning up for me to do.
+    What? Cry at dogs, great lumps like you?"
+    She licked her handkerchief and smeared
+    Their faces where the dirt appeared.
+
+    The hunt trit-trotted to the meeting,
+    Tom Dansey touching cap to greeting,
+    Slow-lifting crop-thong to the rim,
+    No hunter there got more from him
+    Except some brightening of the eye.
+    He halted at the Cock and Pye,
+    The hounds drew round him on the green,
+    Arrogant, Daffodil and Queen,
+    Closest, but all in little space.
+    Some lolled their tongues, some made grimace,
+    Yawning, or tilting nose in quest,
+    All stood and looked about with zest,
+    They were uneasy as they waited.
+    Their sires and dams had been well-mated,
+    They were a lovely pack for looks;
+    Their forelegs drumsticked without crooks,
+    Straight, without overtread or bend,
+    Muscled to gallop to the end,
+    With neat feet round as any cat's.
+    Great chested, muscled in the slats,
+    Bright, clean, short-coated, broad in shoulder,
+    With stag-like eyes that seemed to smoulder.
+    The heads well-cocked, the clean necks strong;
+    Brows broad, ears close, the muzzles long;
+    And all like racers in the thighs;
+    Their noses exquisitely wise,
+    Their minds being memories of smells;
+    Their voices like a ring of bells;
+    Their sterns all spirit, cock and feather;
+    Their colours like the English weather,
+    Magpie and hare, and badger-pye,
+    Like minglings in a double dye,
+    Some smutty-nosed, some tan, none bald;
+    Their manners were to come when called,
+    Their flesh was sinew knit to bone,
+    Their courage like a banner blown.
+    Their joy, to push him out of cover,
+    And hunt him till they rolled him over.
+    They were as game as Robert Dover.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHIP
+
+
+    Tom Dansey was a famous whip
+    Trained as a child in horsemanship.
+    Entered, as soon as he was able,
+    As boy at Caunter's racing stable;
+    There, like the other boys, he slept
+    In stall beside the horse he kept,
+    Snug in the straw; and Caunter's stick
+    Brought morning to him all too quick.
+    He learned the high quick gingery ways
+    Of thoroughbreds; his stable days
+    Made him a rider, groom and vet.
+    He promised to be too thickset
+    For jockeying, so left it soon.
+    Now he was whip and rode Maroon.
+
+[Illustration:
+His chief delight
+Was hunting fox from noon to night.]
+
+    He was a small, lean, wiry man
+    With sunk cheeks weathered to a tan
+    Scarred by the spikes of hawthorn sprays
+    Dashed thro', head down, on going days,
+    In haste to see the line they took.
+    There was a beauty in his look,
+    It was intent. His speech was plain.
+    Maroon's head, reaching to the rein,
+    Had half his thought before he spoke.
+    His "gone away," when foxes broke,
+    Was like a bell. His chief delight
+    Was hunting fox from noon to night.
+    His pleasure lay in hounds and horses,
+    He loved the Seven Springs water-courses,
+    Those flashing brooks (in good sound grass,
+    Where scent would hang like breath on glass).
+    He loved the English countryside;
+    The wine-leaved bramble in the ride,
+    The lichen on the apple-trees,
+    The poultry ranging on the lees,
+    The farms, the moist earth-smelling cover,
+    His wife's green grave at Mitcheldover,
+    Where snowdrops pushed at the first thaw.
+    Under his hide his heart was raw
+    With joy and pity of these things.
+    The second whip was Kitty Myngs,
+    Still but a lad but keen and quick
+    (Son of old Myngs who farmed the Wick),
+    A horse-mouthed lad who knew his work.
+    He rode the big black horse, the Turk,
+    And longed to be a huntsman bold.
+    He had the horse-look, sharp and old,
+    With much good-nature in his face.
+    His passion was to go the pace
+    His blood was crying for a taming.
+    He was the Devil's chick for gaming,
+    He was a rare good lad to box.
+    He sometimes had a main of cocks
+    Down at the Flags. His job with hounds
+    At present kept his blood in bounds
+    From rioting and running hare.
+    Tom Dansey made him have a care.
+    He worshipped Dansey heart and soul.
+    To be a huntsman was his goal.
+    To be with hounds, to charge full tilt
+    Blackthorns that made the gentry wilt
+    Was his ambition and his hope.
+    He was a hot colt needing rope,
+    He was too quick to speak his passion
+    To suit his present huntsman's fashion.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUNTSMAN
+
+
+[Illustration: He smiled and nodded and saluted to those who hailed him]
+
+    The huntsman, Robin Dawe, looked round,
+    He sometimes called a favourite hound,
+    Gently, to see the creature turn
+    Look happy up and wag his stern.
+    He smiled and nodded and saluted,
+    To those who hailed him, as it suited.
+    And patted Pip's, his hunter's neck.
+    His new pink was without a speck;
+    He was a red-faced smiling fellow,
+    His voice clear tenor, full and mellow,
+    His eyes, all fire, were black and small.
+    He had been smashed in many a fall.
+    His eyebrow had a white curved mark
+    Left by the bright shoe of The Lark,
+    Down in a ditch by Seven Springs.
+    His coat had all been trod to strings,
+    His ribs laid bare and shoulder broken
+    Being jumped on down at Water's Oaken,
+    The time his horse came down and rolled.
+    His face was of the country mould
+    Such as the mason sometimes cutted
+    On English moulding-ends which jutted
+    Out of the church walls, centuries since.
+    And as you never know the quince,
+    How good he is, until you try,
+    So, in Dawe's face, what met the eye
+    Was only part, what lay behind
+    Was English character and mind.
+    Great kindness, delicate sweet feeling,
+    (Most shy, most clever in concealing
+    Its depth) for beauty of all sorts,
+    Great manliness and love of sports,
+    A grave wise thoughtfulness and truth,
+    A merry fun, outlasting youth,
+    A courage terrible to see
+    And mercy for his enemy.
+
+    He had a clean-shaved face, but kept
+    A hedge of whisker neatly clipt,
+    A narrow strip or picture frame
+    (Old Dawe, the woodman, did the same),
+    Under his chin from ear to ear.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASTER
+
+
+    But now the resting hounds gave cheer,
+    Joyful and Arrogant and Catch-him,
+    Smelt the glad news and ran to snatch him,
+    The Master's dogcart turned the bend.
+    Damsel and Skylark knew their friend;
+    A thrill ran through the pack like fire,
+    And little whimpers ran in quire.
+    The horses cocked and pawed and whickered,
+    Young Cothill's chaser kicked and bickered,
+    And stood on end and struck out sparks.
+    Joyful and Catch-him sang like larks,
+    There was the Master in the trap,
+    Clutching old Roman in his lap,
+    Old Roman, crazy for his brothers,
+    And putting frenzy in the others,
+    To set them at the dogcart wheels,
+    With thrusting heads and little squeals.
+
+    The Master put old Roman by,
+    And eyed the thrusters heedfully,
+    He called a few pet hounds and fed
+    Three special friends with scraps of bread,
+    Then peeled his wraps, climbed down and strode
+    Through all those clamourers in the road,
+    Saluted friends, looked round the crowd,
+    Saw Harridew's three girls and bowed,
+    Then took White Rabbit from the groom.
+
+[Illustration:
+He had a welcome and salute
+For all, on horse or wheel or foot.]
+
+    He was Sir Peter Bynd, of Coombe;
+    Past sixty now, though hearty still,
+    A living picture of good-will,
+    An old, grave soldier, sweet and kind,
+    A courtier with a knightly mind,
+    Who felt whatever thing he thought.
+    His face was scarred, for he had fought
+    Five wars for us. Within his face
+    Courage and power had their place,
+    Rough energy, decision, force.
+    He smiled about him from his horse.
+    He had a welcome and salute
+    For all, on horse or wheel or foot,
+    Whatever kind of life each followed.
+    His tanned, drawn cheeks looked old and hollowed,
+    But still his bright blue eyes were young,
+    And when the pack crashed into tongue,
+    And staunch White Rabbit shook like fire,
+    He sent him at it like a flier,
+    And lived with hounds while horses could.
+    "They'm lying in the Ghost Heath Wood,
+    Sir Peter," said an earth-stopper,
+    (Old Baldy Hill), "You'll find 'em there.
+    'Z I come'd across I smell 'em plain.
+    There's one up back, down Tuttock's drain,
+    But, Lord, it's just a bog, the Tuttocks,
+    Hounds would be swallered to the buttocks.
+    Heath Wood, Sir Peter's best to draw."
+
+
+
+
+THE START
+
+
+    Sir Peter gave two minutes' law
+    For Kingston Challow and his daughter;
+    He said, "They're late. We'll start the slaughter.
+    Ghost Heath, then, Dansey. We'll be going."
+
+    Now, at his word, the tide was flowing
+    Off went Maroon, off went the hounds,
+    Down road, then off, to Chols Elm Grounds,
+    Across soft turf with dead leaves cleaving
+    And hillocks that the mole was heaving.
+    Mild going to those trotting feet.
+    After the scarlet coats, the meet
+    Came clopping up the grass in spate;
+    They poached the trickle at the gate;
+    Their horses' feet sucked at the mud;
+    Excitement in the horses' blood,
+    Cocked forward every ear and eye;
+    They quivered as the hounds went by,
+    They trembled when they first trod grass;
+    They would not let another pass,
+    They scattered wide up Chols Elm Hill.
+
+[Illustration: Fourth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son,
+New York_]
+
+    The wind was westerly but still;
+    The sky a high fair-weather cloud,
+    Like meadows ridge-and-furrow ploughed,
+    Just glinting sun but scarcely moving.
+    Blackbirds and thrushes thought of loving,
+    Catkins were out; the day seemed tense
+    It was so still. At every fence
+    Cow-parsley pushed its thin green fern.
+    White-violet-leaves shewed at the burn.
+
+[Illustration: Young Cothill let his chaser go round Chols Elm Field]
+
+    Young Cothill let his chaser go
+    Round Chols Elm Field a turn or so
+    To soothe his edge. The riders went
+    Chatting and laughing and content
+    In groups of two or three together.
+    The hounds, a flock of shaking feather,
+    Bobbed on ahead, past Chols Elm Cop.
+    The horses' shoes went clip-a-clop,
+    Along the stony cart-track there.
+    The little spinney was all bare,
+    But in the earth-moist winter day
+    The scarlet coats twixt tree and spray,
+    The glistening horses pressing on,
+    The brown faced lads, Bill, Dick and John,
+    And all the hurry to arrive,
+    Were beautiful, like Spring alive.
+    The hounds melted away with Master
+    The tanned lads ran, the field rode faster,
+    The chatter joggled in the throats
+    Of riders bumping by like boats,
+    "We really ought to hunt a bye day."
+    "Fine day for scent," "A fly or die day."
+    "They chopped a bagman in the check,
+    He had a collar round his neck."
+    "Old Ridden's girl's a pretty flapper."
+    "That Vaughan's a cad, the whipper-snapper."
+    "I tell 'ee, lads, I seed 'em plain,
+    Down in the Rough at Shifford's Main,
+    Old Squire stamping like a Duke,
+    So red with blood I thought he'd puke,
+    In appleplexie, as they do.
+    Miss Jane stood just as white as dew,
+    And heard him out in just white heat,
+    And then she trimmed him down a treat,
+    About Miss Lou it was, or Carrie
+    (She'd be a pretty peach to marry)."
+    "Her'll draw up-wind, so us'll go
+    Down by the furze, we'll see 'em so."
+
+[Illustration:
+The scarlet coats twixt tree and spray,
+The glistening horses pressing on,
+   *       *       *       *       *
+And all the hurry to arrive,
+Were beautiful, like Spring alive.]
+
+    "Look, there they go, lad."
+
+                     There they went,
+    Across the brook and up the bent,
+    Past Primrose Wood, past Brady Ride,
+    Along Ghost Heath to cover side.
+    The bobbing scarlet, trotting pack,
+    Turf scatters tossed behind each back,
+    Some horses blowing with a whinny,
+    A jam of horses in the spinney,
+    Close to the ride-gate; leather straining,
+    Saddles all creaking; men complaining,
+    Chaffing each other as they pass't,
+    On Ghost Heath turf they trotted fast.
+    Now as they neared the Ghost Heath Wood
+    Some riders grumbled, "What's the good:
+    It's shot all day and poached all night.
+    We shall draw blank and lose the light,
+    And lose the scent, and lose the day.
+    Why can't he draw Hope Goneaway,
+    Or Tuttocks Wood, instead of this?
+    There's no fox here, there never is."
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+    But as he trotted up to cover,
+    Robin was watching to discover
+    What chance there was, and many a token
+    Told him, that though no hound had spoken,
+    Most of them stirred to something there.
+    The old hounds' muzzles searched the air,
+    Thin ghosts of scents were in their teeth,
+    From foxes which had crossed the Heath
+    Not very many hours before.
+    "We'll find," he said, "I'll bet a score."
+    Along Ghost Heath they trotted well,
+    The hoof-cuts made the bruised earth smell,
+    The shaken brambles scattered drops,
+    Stray pheasants kukkered out of copse,
+    Cracking the twigs down with their knockings
+    And planing out of sight with cockings;
+    A scut or two lopped white to bramble.
+
+
+
+
+"COVER"
+
+
+    And now they gathered to the gamble
+    At Ghost Heath Wood on Ghost Heath Down,
+    The hounds went crackling through the brown
+    Dry stalks of bracken killed by frost.
+    The wood stood silent in its host
+    Of halted trees all winter bare.
+    The boughs, like veins that suck the air,
+    Stretched tense, the last leaf scarcely stirred.
+    There came no song from any bird;
+    The darkness of the wood stood still
+    Waiting for fate on Ghost Heath Hill.
+    The whips crept to the sides to view;
+    The Master gave the nod, and "Leu,
+    Leu in, Ed-hoick, Ed-hoick, Leu in,"
+    Went Robin, cracking through the whin
+    And through the hedge-gap into cover.
+    The binders crashed as hounds went over,
+    And cock-cock-cock the pheasants rose.
+    Then up went stern and down went nose,
+    And Robin's cheerful tenor cried,
+    Through hazel-scrub and stub and ride,
+    "O wind him, beauties, push him out,
+    Yooi, onto him, Yahout, Yahout,
+    O push him out, Yooi, wind him, wind him."
+    The beauties burst the scrub to find him,
+    They nosed the warren's clipped green lawn,
+    The bramble and the broom were drawn,
+    The covert's northern end was blank.
+
+[Illustration:
+And now they gathered to the gamble
+At Ghost Heath Wood on Ghost Heath Down.]
+
+    They turned to draw along the bank
+    Through thicker cover than the Rough
+    Through three-and-four-year understuff
+    Where Robin's forearm screened his eyes.
+    "Yooi, find him, beauties," came his cries.
+    "Hark, hark to Daffodil," the laughter
+    Faln from his horn, brought whimpers after,
+    For ends of scents were everywhere.
+    He said, "This Hope's a likely lair.
+    And there's his billets, grey and furred.
+    And George, he's moving, there's a bird."
+
+    A blue uneasy jay was chacking.
+    (A swearing screech, like tearing sacking)
+    From tree to tree, as in pursuit,
+    He said "That's it. There's fox afoot.
+    And there, they're feathering, there she speaks.
+    Good Daffodil, good Tarrybreeks,
+    Hark there, to Daffodil, hark, hark."
+    The mild horn's note, the soft flaked spark
+    Of music, fell on that rank scent.
+    From heart to wild heart magic went.
+    The whimpering quivered, quavered, rose.
+    "Daffodil has it. There she goes.
+    O hark to her." With wild high crying
+    From frantic hearts, the hounds went flying
+    To Daffodil for that rank taint.
+    A waft of it came warm but faint,
+    In Robin's mouth, and faded so.
+    "First find a fox, then let him go,"
+    Cried Robin Dawe. "For any sake.
+    Ring, Charley, till you're fit to break."
+    He cheered his beauties like a lover
+    And charged beside them into cover.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO--THE FOX
+
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+[Illustration: And there on the night before my tale he trotted out]
+
+    On old Cold Crendon's windy tops
+    Grows wintrily Blown Hilcote Copse,
+    Wind-bitten beech with badger barrows,
+    Where brocks eat wasp-grubs with their marrows,
+    And foxes lie on short-grassed turf,
+    Nose between paws, to hear the surf
+    Of wind in the beeches drowsily.
+    There was our fox bred lustily
+    Three years before, and there he berthed
+    Under the beech-roots snugly earthed,
+    With a roof of flint and a floor of chalk
+    And ten bitten hens' heads each on its stalk,
+    Some rabbits' paws, some fur from scuts,
+    A badger's corpse and a smell of guts.
+    And there on the night before my tale
+    He trotted out for a point in the vale.
+    He saw, from the cover edge, the valley
+    Go trooping down with its droops of sally
+    To the brimming river's lipping bend,
+    And a light in the inn at Water's End.
+    He heard the owl go hunting by
+    And the shriek of the mouse the owl made die,
+    And the purr of the owl as he tore the red
+    Strings from between his claws and fed;
+    The smack of joy of the horny lips
+    Marbled green with the blobby strips.
+    He saw the farms where the dogs were barking,
+    Cold Crendon Court and Copsecote Larking;
+    The fault with the spring as bright as gleed,
+    Green-slash-laced with water weed.
+    A glare in the sky still marked the town,
+    Though all folk slept and the blinds were down,
+    The street lamps watched the empty square,
+    The night-cat sang his evil there.
+    The fox's nose tipped up and round
+    Since smell is a part of sight and sound.
+    Delicate smells were drifting by,
+    The sharp nose flaired them heedfully:
+    Partridges in the clover stubble,
+    Crouched in a ring for the stoat to nubble.
+    Rabbit bucks beginning to box;
+    A scratching place for the pheasant cocks;
+    A hare in the dead grass near the drain,
+    And another smell like the spring again.
+    A faint rank taint like April coming,
+    It cocked his ears and his blood went drumming,
+    For somewhere out by Ghost Heath Stubs
+    Was a roving vixen wanting cubs.
+
+[Illustration:
+He saw the farms where the dogs were barking,
+Cold Crendon Court and Copsecote Larking.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ROVING
+
+
+    Over the valley, floating faint
+    On a warmth of windflaw came the taint,
+    He cocked his ears, he upped his brush,
+    And he went up wind like an April thrush.
+    By the Roman Road to Braiches Ridge
+    Where the fallen willow makes a bridge,
+    Over the brook by White Hart's Thorn,
+    To the acres thin with pricking corn.
+    Over the sparse green hair of the wheat,
+    By the Clench Brook Mill at Clench Brook Leat,
+    Through Cowfoot Pastures to Nonely Stevens,
+    And away to Poltrewood St. Jevons.
+    Past Tott Hill Down all snaked with meuses,
+    Past Clench St. Michael and Naunton Crucis,
+    Past Howle's Oak Farm where the raving brain
+    Of a dog who heard him foamed his chain,
+    Then off, as the farmer's window opened,
+    Past Stonepits Farm to Upton Hope End;
+    Over short sweet grass and worn flint arrows,
+    And the three dumb hows of Tencombe Barrows;
+    And away and away with a rolling scramble,
+    Through the blackthorn and up the bramble,
+    With a nose for the smells the night wind carried,
+    And his red fell clean for being married.
+    For clicketting time and Ghost Heath Wood
+    Had put the violet in his blood.
+
+[Illustration: A dog who heard him foamed his chain]
+
+    At Tencombe Rings near the Manor Linney,
+    His foot made the great black stallion whinny,
+    And the stallion's whinny aroused the stable
+    And the bloodhound bitches stretched their cable,
+    And the clink of the bloodhound's chain aroused
+    The sweet-breathed kye as they chewed and drowsed,
+    And the stir of the cattle changed the dream
+    Of the cat in the loft to tense green gleam.
+    The red-wattled black cock hot from Spain
+    Crowed from his perch for dawn again,
+    His breast-pufft hens, one-legged on perch,
+    Gurgled, beak-down, like men in church,
+    They crooned in the dark, lifting one red eye
+    In the raftered roost as the fox went by.
+
+    By Tencombe Regis and Slaughters Court,
+    Through the great grass square of Roman Fort,
+    By Nun's Wood Yews and the Hungry Hill,
+    And the Corpse Way Stones all standing still,
+    By Seven Springs Mead to Deerlip Brook,
+    And a lolloping leap to Water Hook.
+    Then with eyes like sparks and his blood awoken
+    Over the grass to Water's Oaken,
+    And over the hedge and into ride
+    In Ghost Heath Wood for his roving bride.
+    Before the dawn he had loved and fed
+    And found a kennel and gone to bed
+    On a shelf of grass in a thick of gorse
+    That would bleed a hound and blind a horse.
+    There he slept in the mild west weather
+    With his nose and brush well tucked together,
+    He slept like a child, who sleeps yet hears
+    With the self who needs neither eyes nor ears.
+
+[Illustration:
+There he slept in the mild west weather
+With his nose and brush well tucked together.]
+
+    He slept while the pheasant cock untucked
+    His head from his wing, flew down and kukked,
+    While the drove of the starlings whirred and wheeled
+    Out of the ash-trees into field.
+    While with great black flags that flogged and paddled
+    The rooks went out to the plough and straddled,
+    Straddled wide on the moist red cheese
+    Of the furrows driven at Uppat's Leas.
+
+    Down in the village, men awoke,
+    The chimneys breathed with a faint blue smoke,
+    The fox slept on, though tweaks and twitches,
+    Due to his dreams, ran down his flitches.
+
+[Illustration: The fox slept on, though tweaks and twitches]
+
+    The cows were milked and the yards were sluict,
+    And the cocks and hens let out of roost,
+    Windows were opened, mats were beaten,
+    All men's breakfasts were cooked and eaten,
+    But out in the gorse on the grassy shelf,
+    The sleeping fox looked after himself.
+
+    Deep in his dream he heard the life
+    Of the woodland seek for food or wife,
+    The hop of a stoat, a buck that thumped,
+    The squeal of a rat as a weasel jumped,
+    The blackbird's chackering scattering crying,
+    The rustling bents from the rabbits flying,
+    Cows in a byre, and distant men,
+    And Condicote church-clock striking ten.
+
+    At eleven o'clock a boy went past,
+    With a rough-haired terrier following fast.
+    The boy's sweet whistle and dog's quick yap
+    Woke the fox from out of his nap.
+
+[Illustration:
+The boy's sweet whistle and dog's quick yap
+Woke the fox from out of his nap.]
+
+
+
+
+SCENT
+
+
+    He rose and stretched till the claws in his pads
+    Stuck hornily out like long black gads,
+    He listened a while, and his nose went round
+    To catch the smell of the distant sound.
+
+    The windward smells came free from taint
+    They were rabbit, strongly, with lime-kiln, faint,
+    A wild-duck, likely, at Sars Holt Pond,
+    And sheep on the Sars Holt Down beyond.
+    The lee-ward smells were much less certain
+    For the Ghost Heath Hill was like a curtain,
+    Yet vague, from the lee-ward, now and then,
+    Came muffled sounds like the sound of men.
+
+    He moved to his right to a clearer space,
+    And all his soul came into his face,
+    Into his eyes and into his nose,
+    As over the hill a murmur rose.
+
+    His ears were cocked and his keen nose flaired,
+    He sneered with his lips till his teeth were bared,
+    He trotted right and lifted a pad
+    Trying to test what foes he had.
+
+
+
+
+SOUND
+
+
+    On Ghost Heath turf was a steady drumming
+    Which sounded like horses quickly coming,
+    It died as the hunt went down the dip,
+    Then Malapert yelped at Myngs's whip.
+    A bright iron horseshoe clinkt on stone,
+    Then a man's voice spoke, not one alone,
+    Then a burst of laughter, swiftly still,
+    Muffled away by Ghost Heath Hill.
+    Then, indistinctly, the clop, clip, clep,
+    On Brady Ride, of a horse's step.
+    Then silence, then, in a burst, much clearer,
+    Voices and horses coming nearer,
+    And another noise, of a pit-pat beat
+    On the Ghost Hill grass, of foxhound feet.
+
+    He sat on his haunches listening hard,
+    While his mind went over the compass card,
+    Men were coming and rest was done,
+    But he still had time to get fit to run;
+    He could outlast horse and outrace hound,
+    But men were devils from Lobs's Pound.
+    Scent was burning, the going good
+    The world one lust for a fox's blood,
+    The main earths stopped and the drains put-to,
+    And fifteen miles to the land he knew.
+    But of all the ills, the ill least pleasant
+    Was to run in the light when men were present.
+    Men in the fields to shout and sign
+    For a lift of hounds to a fox's line.
+    Men at the earth at the long point's end,
+    Men at each check and none his friend,
+    Guessing each shift that a fox contrives,
+    But still, needs must when the devil drives.
+
+[Illustration: Men at the earth at the long point's end]
+
+    He readied himself, then a soft horn blew,
+    Then a clear voice carolled "Ed-hoick. Eleu."
+    Then the wood-end rang with the clear voice crying
+    And the crackle of scrub where hounds were trying.
+
+[Illustration: He trotted down with his nose intent]
+
+    Then, the horn blew nearer, a hound's voice quivered,
+    Then another, then more, till his body shivered,
+    He left his kennel and trotted thence
+    With his ears flexed back and his nerves all tense.
+    He trotted down with his nose intent
+    For a fox's line to cross his scent,
+    It was only fair (he being a stranger)
+    That the native fox should have the danger.
+    Danger was coming, so swift, so swift,
+    That the pace of his trot began to lift
+    The blue-winged Judas, a jay, began
+    Swearing, hounds whimpered, air stank of man.
+
+    He hurried his trotting, he now felt frighted,
+    It was his poor body made hounds excited,
+    He felt as he ringed the great wood through
+    That he ought to make for the land he knew.
+
+    Then the hounds' excitement quivered and quickened,
+    Then a horn blew death till his marrow sickened
+    Then the wood behind was a crash of cry
+    For the blood in his veins; it made him fly.
+
+    They were on his line; it was death to stay,
+    He must make for home by the shortest way,
+    But with all this yelling and all this wrath
+    And all these devils, how find a path?
+
+    He ran like a stag to the wood's north corner,
+    Where the hedge was thick and the ditch a yawner,
+    But the scarlet glimpse of Myngs on Turk,
+    Watching the woodside, made him shirk.
+
+    He ringed the wood and looked at the south.
+    What wind there was blew into his mouth.
+    But close to the woodland's blackthorn thicket
+    Was Dansey, still as a stone, on picket.
+    At Dansey's back were a twenty more
+    Watching the cover and pressing fore.
+
+[Illustration: The fox drew in]
+
+    The fox drew in and flaired with his muzzle.
+    Death was there if he messed the puzzle.
+    There were men without and hounds within,
+    A crying that stiffened the hair on skin,
+    Teeth in cover and death without,
+    Both deaths coming, and no way out.
+
+
+
+
+FOUND
+
+
+    His nose ranged swiftly, his heart beat fast,
+    Then a crashing cry rose up in a blast,
+    Then horse hooves trampled, then horses' flitches
+    Burst their way through the hazel switches,
+    Then the horn again made the hounds like mad,
+    And a man, quite near, said "Found, by Gad,"
+    And a man, quite near, said "Now he'll break.
+    Lark's Leybourne Copse is the line he'll take."
+    And the men moved up with their talk and stink
+    And the traplike noise of the horseshoe clink.
+    Men whose coming meant death from teeth
+    In a worrying wrench with him beneath.
+
+    The fox sneaked down by the cover side,
+    (With his ears flexed back) as a snake would glide,
+    He took the ditch at the cover-end,
+    He hugged the ditch as his only friend.
+    The blackbird cock with the golden beak
+    Got out of his way with a jabbering shriek,
+    And the shriek told Tom on the raking bay
+    That for eighteen pence he was gone away.
+
+[Illustration: The blackbird got out of his way with a jabbering shriek]
+
+    He ran in the hedge in the triple growth
+    Of bramble and hawthorn, glad of both,
+    Till a couple of fields were past, and then
+    Came the living death of the dread of men.
+
+    Then, as he listened, he heard a "Hoy,"
+    Tom Dansey's horn and "Awa-wa-woy."
+    Then all hounds crying with all their forces,
+    Then a thundering down of seventy horses.
+    Robin Dawe's horn and halloos of "Hey
+    Hark Hollar, Hoik" and "Gone away,"
+    "Hark Hollar Hoik," and the smack of a whip,
+    A yelp as a tail hound caught the clip.
+    "Hark Hollar, Hark Hollar"; then Robin made
+    Pip go crash through the cut-and-laid,
+    Hounds were over and on his line
+    With a head like bees upon Tipple Tine.
+    The sound of the nearness sent a flood
+    Of terror of death through the fox's blood.
+    He upped his brush and he cocked his nose,
+    And he went up wind as a racer goes.
+
+
+
+
+AWAY
+
+
+[Illustration: The hounds went romping with delight]
+
+    Bold Robin Dawe was over first,
+    Cheering his hounds on at the burst;
+    The field were spurring to be in it,
+    "Hold hard, sirs, give them half a minute,"
+    Came from Sir Peter on his white.
+    The hounds went romping with delight
+    Over the grass and got together;
+    The tail hounds galloped hell-for-leather
+    After the pack at Myngs's yell;
+    A cry like every kind of bell
+    Rang from these rompers as they raced.
+
+    The riders thrusting to be placed,
+    Jammed down their hats and shook their horses,
+    The hounds romped past with all their forces,
+    They crashed into the blackthorn fence;
+    The scent was heavy on their sense,
+    So hot it seemed the living thing,
+    It made the blood within them sing,
+    Gusts of it made their hackles rise,
+    Hot gulps of it were agonies
+    Of joy, and thirst for blood, and passion.
+
+[Illustration: Fifth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son,
+New York_]
+
+    "Forrard," cried Robin, "that's the fashion."
+    He raced beside his pack to cheer.
+    The field's noise died upon his ear,
+    A faint horn, far behind, blew thin
+    In cover, lest some hound were in.
+    Then instantly the great grass rise
+    Shut field and cover from his eyes,
+    He and his racers were alone.
+    "A dead fox or a broken bone,"
+    Said Robin, peering for his prey.
+    The rise, which shut his field away,
+    Shewed him the vale's great map spread out,
+    The downs' lean flank and thrusting snout,
+    Pale pastures, red-brown plough, dark wood,
+    Blue distance, still as solitude,
+    Glitter of water here and there,
+    The trees so delicately bare.
+    The dark green gorse and bright green holly.
+    "O glorious God," he said, "how jolly."
+    And there, down hill, two fields ahead,
+    The lolloping red dog-fox sped
+    Over Poor Pastures to the brook.
+    He grasped these things in one swift look
+    Then dived into the bulfinch heart
+    Through thorns that ripped his sleeves apart
+    And skutched new blood upon his brow.
+    "His point's Lark's Leybourne Covers now,"
+    Said Robin, landing with a grunt,
+    "Forrard, my beautifuls."
+
+                                  The hunt
+    Followed down hill to race with him,
+    White Rabbit with his swallow's skim,
+    Drew within hail, "Quick burst, Sir Peter."
+    "A traveller. Nothing could be neater.
+    Making for Godsdown clumps, I take it?"
+    "Lark's Leybourne, sir, if he can make it.
+    Forrard."
+
+
+
+
+THE FIELD
+
+
+                 Bill Ridden thundered down;
+    His big mouth grinned beneath his frown,
+    The hounds were going away from horses.
+    He saw the glint of water-courses,
+    Yell Brook and Wittold's Dyke ahead,
+    His horse shoes sliced the green turf red.
+    Young Cothill's chaser rushed and passt him,
+    Nob Manor, running next, said "Blast him,
+    That poet chap who thinks he rides."
+    Hugh Colway's mare made straking strides
+    Across the grass, the Colonel next:
+    Then Squire volleying oaths and vext,
+    Fighting his hunter for refusing:
+    Bell Ridden like a cutter cruising
+    Sailing the grass, then Cob on Warder,
+    Then Minton Price upon Marauder;
+    Ock Gurney with his eyes intense,
+    Burning as with a different sense,
+    His big mouth muttering glad "by damns";
+    Then Pete crouched down from head to hams,
+    Rapt like a saint, bright focussed flame.
+    Bennett with devils in his wame
+    Chewing black cud and spitting slanting;
+    Copse scattering jests and Stukely ranting;
+    Sal Ridden taking line from Dansey;
+    Long Robert forcing Necromancy;
+    A dozen more with bad beginnings;
+    Myngs riding hard to snatch an innings,
+    A wild last hound with high shrill yelps,
+    Smacked forrard with some whip-thong skelps.
+    Then last of all, at top of rise,
+    The crowd on foot all gasps and eyes
+    The run up hill had winded them.
+
+    They saw the Yell Brook like a gem
+    Blue in the grass a short mile on,
+    They heard faint cries, but hounds were gone
+    A good eight fields and out of sight
+    Except a rippled glimmer white
+    Going away with dying cheering
+    And scarlet flappings disappearing,
+    And scattering horses going, going,
+    Going like mad, White Rabbit snowing
+    Far on ahead, a loose horse taking,
+    Fence after fence with stirrups shaking,
+    And scarlet specks and dark specks dwindling.
+
+[Illustration: Far on ahead, a loose horse taking fence after fence]
+
+    Nearer, were twigs knocked into kindling,
+    A much bashed fence still dropping stick,
+    Flung clods, still quivering from the kick,
+    Cut hoof-marks pale in cheesy clay,
+    The horse-smell blowing clean away.
+    Birds flitting back into the cover.
+    One last faint cry, then all was over.
+    The hunt had been, and found, and gone.
+
+[Illustration:
+He faced the fence and put her through it
+Shielding his eyes lest spikes should blind him.]
+
+    At Neakings Farm, three furlongs on,
+    Hounds raced across the Waysmore Road,
+    Where many of the riders slowed
+    To tittup down a grassy lane,
+    Which led as hounds led in the main
+    And gave no danger of a fall.
+    There, as they tittupped one and all,
+    Big Twenty Stone came scattering by,
+    His great mare made the hoof-casts fly.
+    "By leave," he cried. "Come on. Come up,
+    This fox is running like a tup;
+    Let's leave this lane and get to terms.
+    No sense in crawling here like worms.
+    Come, let me past and let me start,
+    This fox is running like a hart,
+    And this is going to be a run.
+    Come on. I want to see the fun.
+    Thanky. By leave. Now, Maiden; do it."
+    He faced the fence and put her through it
+    Shielding his eyes lest spikes should blind him,
+    The crashing blackthorn closed behind him.
+    Mud-scatters chased him as he scudded.
+    His mare's ears cocked, her neat feet thudded.
+
+
+
+
+THE RUN
+
+
+    The kestrel cruising over meadow
+    Watched the hunt gallop on his shadow,
+    Wee figures, almost at a stand,
+    Crossing the multi-coloured land,
+    Slow as a shadow on a dial.
+
+[Illustration: Some horses, swerving at a trial]
+
+    Some horses, swerving at a trial,
+    Baulked at a fence: at gates they bunched.
+    The mud about the gates was dunched.
+    Like German cheese; men pushed for places,
+    And kicked the mud into the faces
+    Of those who made them room to pass.
+    The half-mile's gallop on the grass,
+    Had tailed them out, and warmed their blood.
+
+[Illustration: At gates they bunched]
+
+    "His point's the Banner Barton Wood."
+    "That, or Goat's Gorse." "A stinger, this."
+    "You're right in that; by Jove it is."
+    "An up-wind travelling fox, by George."
+    "They say Tom viewed him at the forge."
+    "Well, let me pass and let's be on."
+
+    They crossed the lane to Tolderton,
+    The hill-marl died to valley clay,
+    And there before them ran the grey
+    Yell Water, swirling as it ran,
+    The Yell Brook of the hunting man.
+    The hunters eyed it and were grim.
+    They saw the water snaking slim
+    Ahead, like silver; they could see
+    (Each man) his pollard willow tree
+    Firming the bank, they felt their horses
+    Catch the gleam's hint and gather forces;
+    They heard the men behind draw near.
+    Each horse was trembling as a spear
+    Trembles in hand when tense to hurl,
+    They saw the brimmed brook's eddies curl.
+    The willow-roots like water-snakes;
+    The beaten holes the ratten makes,
+    They heard the water's rush; they heard
+    Hugh Colway's mare come like a bird;
+    A faint cry from the hounds ahead,
+    Then saddle-strain, the bright hooves' tread,
+    Quick words, the splash of mud, the launch,
+    The sick hope that the bank be staunch,
+    Then Souse, with Souse to left and right.
+    Maroon across, Sir Peter's white
+    Down but pulled up, Tom over, Hugh
+    Mud to the hat but over, too,
+    Well splashed by Squire who was in.
+
+    With draggled pink stuck close to skin,
+    The Squire leaned from bank and hauled
+    His mired horse's rein; he bawled
+    For help from each man racing by.
+    "What, help you pull him out? Not I.
+    What made you pull him in?" they said.
+    Nob Manor cleared and turned his head,
+    And cried "Wade up. The ford's upstream."
+    Ock Gurney in a cloud of steam
+    Stood by his dripping cob and wrung
+    The taste of brook mud from his tongue
+    And scraped his poor cob's pasterns clean.
+    "Lord, what a crowner we've a been,
+    This jumping brook's a mucky job."
+    He muttered, grinning, "Lord, poor cob.
+    Now sir, let me." He turned to Squire
+    And cleared his hunter from the mire
+    By skill and sense and strength of arm.
+
+
+
+
+FULL CRY
+
+
+    Meanwhile the fox passed Nonesuch Farm,
+    Keeping the spinney on his right.
+    Hounds raced him here with all their might
+    Along the short firm grass, like fire.
+    The cowman viewed him from the byre
+    Lolloping on, six fields ahead,
+    Then hounds, still carrying such a head,
+    It made him stare, then Rob on Pip,
+    Sailing the great grass like a ship,
+    Then grand Maroon in all his glory
+    Sweeping his strides, his great chest hoary
+    With foam fleck and the pale hill-marl.
+    They strode the Leet, they flew the Snarl,
+    They knocked the nuts at Nonesuch Mill,
+    Raced up the spur of Gallows Hill
+    And viewed him there. The line he took
+    Was Tineton and the Pantry Brook,
+    Going like fun and hounds like mad.
+    Tom glanced to see what friends he had
+    Still within sight, before he turned
+    The ridge's shoulder; he discerned,
+    One field away, young Cothill sailing
+    Easily up. Pete Gurney failing,
+    Hugh Colway quartering on Sir Peter,
+    Bill waiting on the mare to beat her,
+    Sal Ridden skirting to the right.
+    A horse, with stirrups flashing bright
+    Over his head at every stride,
+    Looked like the Major's; Tom espied
+    Far back, a scarlet speck of man
+    Running, and straddling as he ran.
+    Charles Copse was up, Nob Manor followed,
+    Then Bennett's big-boned black that wallowed
+    Clumsy, but with the strength of ten.
+    Then black and brown and scarlet men,
+    Brown horses, white and black and grey
+    Scattered a dozen fields away.
+    The shoulder shut the scene away.
+
+[Illustration: Sixth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son,
+New York_]
+
+    From the Gallows Hill to the Tineton Copse
+    There were ten ploughed fields like ten full stops,
+    All wet red clay where a horse's foot
+    Would be swathed, feet thick, like an ash-tree root.
+    The fox raced on, on the headlands firm,
+    Where his swift feet scared the coupling worm,
+    The rooks rose raving to curse him raw
+    He snarled a sneer at their swoop and caw.
+    Then on, then on, down a half ploughed field
+    Where a ship-like plough drave glitter-keeled,
+    With a bay horse near and a white horse leading,
+    And a man saying "Zook" and the red earth bleeding.
+    He gasped as he saw the ploughman drop
+    The stilts and swear at the team to stop.
+    The ploughman ran in his red clay clogs
+    Crying "Zick un, Towzer; zick, good dogs."
+    A couple of wire-haired lurchers lean
+    Arose from his wallet, nosing keen;
+    With a rushing swoop they were on his track,
+    Putting chest to stubble to bite his back.
+    He swerved from his line with the curs at heel,
+    The teeth as they missed him clicked like steel,
+    With a worrying snarl, they quartered on him,
+    While the ploughman shouted "Zick; upon him."
+    The lurcher dogs soon shot their bolt,
+    And the fox raced on by the Hazel Holt,
+    Down the dead grass tilt to the sandstone gash
+    Of the Pantry Brook at Tineton Ash.
+    The loitering water, flooded full,
+    Had yeast on its lip like raddled wool,
+    It was wrinkled over with Arab script
+    Of eddies that twisted up and slipt.
+    The stepping stones had a rush about them
+    So the fox plunged in and swam without them.
+
+[Illustration: He swerved from his line with the curs at heel]
+
+    He crossed to the cattle's drinking shallow
+    Firmed up with rush and the roots of mallow,
+    He wrung his coat from his draggled bones
+    And romped away for the Sarsen Stones.
+
+    A sneaking glance with his ears flexed back,
+    Made sure that his scent had failed the pack,
+    For the red clay, good for corn and roses,
+    Was cold for scent and brought hounds to noses.
+    He slackened pace by the Tineton Tree,
+    (A vast hollow ash-tree grown in three),
+    He wriggled a shake and padded slow,
+    Not sure if the hounds were on or no.
+
+    A horn blew faint, then he heard the sounds
+    Of a cantering huntsman, lifting hounds,
+    The ploughman had raised his hat for sign,
+    And the hounds were lifted and on his line.
+    He heard the splash in the Pantry Brook,
+    And a man's voice: "Thiccy's the line he took,"
+    And a clear "Yoi doit" and a whimpering quaver,
+    Though the lurcher dogs had dulled the savour.
+
+    The fox went off while the hounds made halt,
+    And the horses breathed and the field found fault,
+    But the whimpering rose to a crying crash
+    By the hollow ruin of Tineton Ash.
+    Then again the kettle drum horse hooves beat,
+    And the green blades bent to the fox's feet
+    And the cry rose keen not far behind
+    Of the "Blood, blood, blood" in the fox-hounds' mind.
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+    The fox was strong, he was full of running,
+    He could run for an hour and then be cunning,
+    But the cry behind him made him chill,
+    They were nearer now and they meant to kill.
+    They meant to run him until his blood
+    Clogged on his heart as his brush with mud,
+    Till his back bent up and his tongue hung flagging,
+    And his belly and brush were filthed from dragging.
+    Till he crouched stone still, dead-beat and dirty,
+    With nothing but teeth against the thirty.
+    And all the way to that blinding end
+    He would meet with men and have none his friend.
+    Men to holloa and men to run him,
+    With stones to stagger and yells to stun him,
+    Men to head him, with whips to beat him,
+    Teeth to mangle and mouths to eat him.
+    And all the way, that wild high crying,
+    To cold his blood with the thought of dying,
+    The horn and the cheer, and the drum-like thunder,
+    Of the horse hooves stamping the meadows under.
+    He upped his brush and went with a will
+    For the Sarsen Stones on Wan Dyke Hill.
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+    As he ran the meadow by Tineton Church,
+    A christening party left the porch,
+    They stood stock still as he pounded by,
+    They wished him luck but they thought he'd die.
+    The toothless babe in his long white coat
+    Looked delicate meat, the fox took note;
+    But the sight of them grinning there, pointing finger,
+    Made him put on steam till he went a stinger.
+
+    Past Tineton Church over Tineton Waste,
+    With the lolloping ease of a fox's haste,
+    The fur on his chest blown dry with the air,
+    His brush still up and his cheek-teeth bare.
+    Over the Waste where the ganders grazed,
+    The long swift lilt of his loping lazed,
+    His ears cocked up as his blood ran higher,
+    He saw his point, and his eyes took fire.
+    The Wan Dyke Hill with its fir tree barren,
+    Its dark of gorse and its rabbit warren.
+    The Dyke on its heave like a tightened girth,
+    And holes in the Dyke where a fox might earth.
+    He had rabbitted there long months before,
+    The earths were deep and his need was sore,
+    The way was new, but he took a vearing,
+    And rushed like a blown ship billow-sharing.
+
+    Off Tineton Common to Tineton Dean,
+    Where the wind-hid elders pushed with green;
+    Through the Dean's thin cover across the lane,
+    And up Midwinter to King of Spain.
+    Old Joe at digging his garden grounds,
+    Said "A fox, being hunter; where be hounds?
+    O lord, my back, to be young again,
+    'Stead a zellin zider in King of Spain.
+    O hark, I hear 'em, O sweet, O sweet.
+    Why there be redcoat in Gearge's wheat.
+    And there be redcoat, and there they gallop.
+    Thur go a browncoat down a wallop.
+    Quick, Ellen, quick, come Susan, fly.
+    Here'm hounds. I zeed the fox go by,
+    Go by like thunder, go by like blasting,
+    With his girt white teeth all looking ghasting.
+    Look there come hounds. Hark, hear 'em crying.
+    Lord, belly to stubble, ain't they flying.
+    There's huntsmen, there. The fox come past
+    (As I was digging) as fast as fast.
+    He's only been gone a minute by;
+    A girt dark dog as pert as pye."
+
+    Ellen and Susan came out scattering
+    Brooms and dustpans till all was clattering;
+    They saw the pack come head to foot
+    Running like racers nearly mute;
+    Robin and Dansey quartering near,
+    All going gallop like startled deer.
+    A half dozen flitting scarlets shewing
+    In the thin green Dean where the pines were growing.
+    Black coats and brown coats thrusting and spurring
+    Sending the partridge coveys whirring,
+    Then a rattle up hill and a clop up lane,
+    It emptied the bar of the King of Spain.
+
+    Tom left his cider, Dick left his bitter,
+    Ganfer James left his pipe and spitter,
+    Out they came from the sawdust floor,
+    They said, "They'm going." They said "O Lor."
+
+    The fox raced on, up the Barton Balks,
+    With a crackle of kex in the nettle stalks,
+    Over Hammond's grass to the dark green line
+    Of the larch-wood smelling of turpentine.
+    Scratch Steven Larches, black to the sky,
+    A sadness breathing with one long sigh,
+    Grey ghosts of treen under funeral plumes,
+    A mist of twig over soft brown glooms.
+    As he entered the wood he heard the smacks,
+    Chip-jar, of the fir pole feller's axe,
+    He swerved to the left to a broad green ride,
+    Where a boy made him rush for the further side.
+    He swerved to the left, to the Barton Road,
+    But there were the timberers come to load.
+    Two timber carts and a couple of carters
+    With straps round their knees instead of garters.
+    He swerved to the right, straight down the wood,
+    The carters watched him, the boy hallooed.
+    He leaped from the larch wood into tillage,
+    The cobbler's garden of Barton village.
+
+    The cobbler bent at his wooden foot,
+    Beating sprigs in a broken boot;
+    He wore old glasses with thick horn rim,
+    He scowled at his work for his sight was dim.
+    His face was dingy, his lips were grey,
+    From primming sparrowbills day by day;
+    As he turned his boot he heard a noise
+    At his garden-end and he thought, "It's boys."
+    He saw his cat nip up on the shed,
+    Where her back arched up till it touched her head,
+    He saw his rabbit race round and round
+    Its little black box three feet from ground.
+    His six hens cluckered and flucked to perch,
+    "That's boys," said cobbler, "so I'll go search."
+    He reached his stick and blinked in his wrath,
+    When he saw a fox in his garden path.
+    The fox swerved left and scrambled out
+    Knocking crinked green shells from the Brussels Sprout,
+    He scrambled out through the cobbler's paling,
+    And up Pill's orchard to Purton's Tailing,
+    Across the plough at the top of bent,
+    Through the heaped manure to kill his scent,
+    Over to Aldams, up to Cappells,
+    Past Nursery Lot with its white-washed apples,
+    Past Colston's Broom, past Gaunts, past Sheres,
+    Past Foxwhelps Oasts with their hooded ears,
+    Past Monk's Ash Clerewell, past Beggars Oak,
+    Past the great elms blue with the Hinton smoke,
+    Along Long Hinton to Hinton Green,
+    Where the wind-washed steeple stood serene
+    With its golden bird still sailing air,
+    Past Banner Barton, past Chipping Bare,
+    Past Maddings Hollow, down Dundry Dip,
+    And up Goose Grass to the Sailing Ship.
+
+[Illustration: Seventh colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son,
+New York_]
+
+    The three black firs of the Ship stood still
+    On the bare chalk heave of the Dundry Hill,
+    The fox looked back as he slackened past
+    The scaled red-hole of the mizzen-mast.
+
+
+
+
+VIEW HALLOO
+
+
+    There they were coming, mute but swift,
+    A scarlet smear in the blackthorn rift,
+    A white horse rising, a dark horse flying,
+    And the hungry hounds too tense for crying.
+    Stormcock leading, his stern spear-straight,
+    Racing as though for a piece of plate,
+    Little speck horsemen field on field;
+    Then Dansey viewed him and Robin squealed
+
+[Illustration: A white horse rising, a dark horse flying.]
+
+    At the View Halloo the hounds went frantic,
+    Back went Stormcock and up went Antic,
+    Up went Skylark as Antic sped
+    It was zest to blood how they carried head.
+    Skylark dropped as Maroon drew by,
+    Their hackles lifted, they scored to cry.
+
+    The fox knew well, that before they tore him,
+    They should try their speed on the downs before him,
+    There were three more miles to the Wan Dyke Hill,
+    But his heart was high, that he beat them still.
+    The wind of the downland charmed his bones
+    So off he went for the Sarsen Stones.
+
+    The moan of the three great firs in the wind,
+    And the Ai of the foxhounds died behind,
+    Wind-dapples followed the hill-wind's breath
+    On the Kill Down gorge where the Danes found death;
+    Larks scattered up; the peewits feeding
+    Rose in a flock from the Kill Down Steeding.
+    The hare leaped up from her form and swerved
+    Swift left for the Starveall harebell-turved.
+    On the wind-bare thorn some longtails prinking
+    Cried sweet, as though wind blown glass were chinking.
+    Behind came thudding and loud halloo
+    Or a cry from hounds as they came to view.
+
+    The pure clean air came sweet to his lungs,
+    Till he thought foul scorn of those crying tongues,
+    In a three mile more he would reach the haven
+    In the Wan Dyke croaked on by the raven,
+    In a three mile more he would make his berth
+    On the hard cool floor of a Wan Dyke earth,
+    Too deep for spade, too curved for terrier,
+    With the pride of the race to make rest the merrier.
+    In a three mile more he would reach his dream,
+    So his game heart gulped and he put on steam.
+    Like a rocket shot to a ship ashore,
+    The lean red bolt of his body tore,
+    Like a ripple of wind running swift on grass,
+    Like a shadow on wheat when a cloud blows past,
+    Like a turn at the buoy in a cutter sailing,
+    When the bright green gleam lips white at the railing,
+    Like the April snake whipping back to sheath,
+    Like the gannet's hurtle on fish beneath,
+    Like a kestrel chasing, like a sickle reaping,
+    Like all things swooping, like all things sweeping,
+    Like a hound for stay, like a stag for swift,
+    With his shadow beside like spinning drift.
+    Past the gibbet-stock all stuck with nails,
+    Where they hanged in chains what had hung at jails,
+    Past Ashmundshowe where Ashmund sleeps,
+    And none but the tumbling peewit weeps,
+    Past Curlew Calling, the gaunt grey corner
+    Where the curlew comes as a summer mourner,
+    Past Blowbury Beacon shaking his fleece,
+    Where all winds hurry and none brings peace,
+    Then down, on the mile-long green decline
+    Where the turf's like spring and the air's like wine,
+    Where the sweeping spurs of the downland spill
+    Into Wan Brook Valley and Wan Dyke Hill.
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+    On he went with a galloping rally
+    Past Maesbury Clump for Wan Brook Valley,
+    The blood in his veins went romping high,
+    "Get on, on, on to the earth or die."
+    The air of the downs went purely past,
+    Till he felt the glory of going fast,
+    Till the terror of death, though there indeed,
+    Was lulled for a while by his pride of speed;
+    He was romping away from hounds and hunt,
+    He had Wan Dyke Hill and his earth in front,
+    In a one mile more when his point was made,
+    He would rest in safety from dog or spade;
+    Nose between paws he would hear the shout
+    Of the "gone to earth" to the hounds without,
+    The whine of the hounds, and their cat feet gadding.
+    Scratching the earth, and their breath pad-padding,
+    He would hear the horn call hounds away,
+    And rest in peace till another day.
+    In one mile more he would lie at rest
+    So for one mile more he would go his best.
+    He reached the dip at the long droop's end
+    And he took what speed he had still to spend.
+
+    So down past Maesbury beech clump grey,
+    That would not be green till the end of May,
+    Past Arthur's Table, the white chalk boulder,
+    Where pasque flowers purple the down's grey shoulder,
+    Past Quichelm's Keeping, past Harry's Thorn
+    To Thirty Acre all thin with corn.
+    As he raced the corn towards Wan Dyke Brook,
+    The pack had view of the way he took,
+    Robin hallooed from the downland's crest,
+    He capped them on till they did their best.
+    The quarter mile to the Wan Brook's brink
+    Was raced as quick as a man can think.
+    And here, as he ran to the huntsman's yelling,
+    The fox first felt that the pace was telling,
+    His body and lungs seemed all grown old,
+    His legs less certain, his heart less bold,
+    The hound-noise nearer, the hill slope steeper,
+    The thud in the blood of his body deeper,
+    His pride in his speed, his joy in the race
+    Were withered away, for what use was pace?
+    He had run his best, and the hounds ran better.
+    Then the going worsened, the earth was wetter.
+    Then his brush drooped down till it sometimes dragged,
+    And his fur felt sick and his chest was tagged
+    With taggles of mud, and his pads seemed lead,
+    It was well for him he'd an earth ahead.
+    Down he went to the brook and over,
+    Out of the corn and into the clover,
+    Over the slope that the Wan Brook drains,
+    Past Battle Tump where they earthed the Danes,
+    Then up the hill that the Wan Dyke rings
+    Where the Sarsen Stones stand grand like kings.
+
+[Illustration: Then his brush drooped down till it sometimes dragged]
+
+    Seven Sarsens of granite grim,
+    As he ran them by they looked at him;
+    As he leaped the lip of their earthen paling
+    The hounds were gaining and he was failing.
+
+    He passed the Sarsens, he left the spur,
+    He pressed up hill to the blasted fir,
+    He slipped as he leaped the hedge; he slithered;
+    "He's mine," thought Robin. "He's done; he's dithered."
+    At the second attempt he cleared the fence,
+    He turned half right where the gorse was dense,
+    He was leading hounds by a furlong clear.
+    He was past his best, but his earth was near.
+    He ran up gorse, to the spring of the ramp,
+    The steep green wall of the dead men's camp,
+    He sidled up it and scampered down
+    To the deep green ditch of the dead men's town.
+
+    Within, as he reached that soft green turf,
+    The wind, blowing lonely, moaned like surf,
+    Desolate ramparts rose up steep,
+    On either side, for the ghosts to keep.
+
+    He raced the trench, past the rabbit warren,
+    Close grown with moss which the wind made barren,
+    He passed the spring where the rushes spread,
+    And there in the stones was his earth ahead.
+    One last short burst upon failing feet,
+    There life lay waiting, so sweet, so sweet,
+    Rest in a darkness, balm for aches.
+
+    The earth was stopped. It was barred with stakes.
+
+
+
+
+LAST HOPE
+
+
+[Illustration: A mask]
+
+    With hounds at head so close behind
+    He had to run as he changed his mind.
+    This earth, as he saw, was stopped, but still
+    There was one earth more on the Wan Dyke Hill.
+    A rabbit burrow a furlong on,
+    He could kennel there till the hounds were gone.
+    Though his death seemed near he did not blench
+    He upped his brush and he ran the trench.
+
+    He ran the trench while the wind moaned treble,
+    Earth trickled down, there were falls of pebble.
+    Down in the valley of that dark gash
+    The wind-withered grasses looked like ash.
+    Trickles of stones and earth fell down
+    In that dark valley of dead men's town.
+    A hawk arose from a fluff of feathers,
+    From a distant fold came a bleat of wethers.
+    He heard no noise from the hounds behind
+    But the hill-wind moaning like something blind.
+
+    He turned the bend in the hill and there
+    Was his rabbit-hole with its mouth worn bare,
+    But there with a gun tucked under his arm
+    Was young Sid Kissop of Purlpits Farm,
+    With a white hob ferret to drive the rabbit
+    Into a net which was set to nab it.
+    And young Jack Cole peered over the wall
+    And loosed a pup with a "Z'bite en, Saul,"
+    The terrier pup attacked with a will,
+    So the fox swerved right and away down hill.
+
+    Down from the ramp of the Dyke he ran
+    To the brackeny patch where the gorse began,
+    Into the gorse, where the hill's heave hid
+    The line he took from the eyes of Sid
+    He swerved down wind and ran like a hare
+    For the wind-blown spinney below him there.
+
+    He slipped from the Gorse to the spinney dark
+    (There were curled grey growths on the oak tree bark)
+    He saw no more of the terrier pup.
+    But he heard men speak and the hounds come up.
+
+    He crossed the spinney with ears intent
+    For the cry of hounds on the way he went,
+    His heart was thumping, the hounds were near now,
+    He could make no sprint at a cry and cheer now,
+    He was past his perfect, his strength was failing,
+    His brush sag-sagged and his legs were ailing.
+    He felt as he skirted Dead Men's Town,
+    That in one mile more they would have him down.
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+
+
+
+CHECKED
+
+
+[Illustration: They had ceased to run, they had come to check]
+
+    Through the withered oak's wind-crouching tops
+    He saw men's scarlet above the copse,
+    He heard men's oaths, yet he felt hounds slacken
+    In the frondless stalks of the brittle bracken.
+
+    He felt that the unseen link which bound
+    His spine to the nose of the leading hound,
+    Was snapped, that the hounds no longer knew
+    Which way to follow nor what to do;
+    That the threat of the hound's teeth left his neck,
+    They had ceased to run, they had come to check,
+    They were quartering wide on the Wan Hill's bent.
+
+    The terrier's chase had killed his scent.
+
+    He heard bits chink as the horses shifted,
+    He heard hounds cast, then he heard hounds lifted,
+    But there came no cry from a new attack,
+    His heart grew steady, his breath came back.
+
+    He left the spinney and ran its edge,
+    By the deep dry ditch of the blackthorn hedge,
+    Then out of the ditch and down the meadow,
+    Trotting at ease in the blackthorn shadow
+    Over the track called Godsdown Road,
+    To the great grass heave of the gods' abode,
+    He was moving now upon land he knew
+    Up Clench Royal and Morton Tew,
+    The Pol Brook, Cheddesdon and East Stoke Church,
+    High Clench St. Lawrence and Tinker's Birch,
+    Land he had roved on night by night,
+    For hot blood suckage or furry bite,
+    The threat of the hounds behind was gone;
+    He breathed deep pleasure and trotted on.
+    While young Sid Kissop thrashed the pup,
+    Robin on Pip came heaving up,
+    And found his pack spread out at check.
+    "I'd like to wring your terrier's neck,"
+    He said, "You see? He's spoiled our sport.
+    He's killed the scent." He broke off short,
+    And stared at hounds and at the valley.
+    No jay or magpie gave a rally
+    Down in the copse, no circling rooks
+    Rose over fields; old Joyful's looks
+    Were doubtful in the gorse, the pack
+    Quested both up and down and back.
+    He watched each hound for each small sign.
+    They tried, but could not hit the line,
+    The scent was gone. The field took place
+    Out of the way of hounds. The pace
+    Had tailed them out; though four remained:
+
+    Sir Peter, on White Rabbit stained
+    Red from the brooks, Bill Ridden cheery,
+    Hugh Colway with his mare dead weary.
+    The Colonel with Marauder beat.
+    They turned towards a thud of feet;
+    Dansey, and then young Cothill came
+    (His chestnut mare was galloped tame).
+    "There's Copse, a field behind," he said.
+    "Those last miles put them all to bed.
+    They're strung along the downs like flies."
+    Copse and Nob Manor topped the rise.
+    "Thank God, a check," they said, "at last."
+
+[Illustration:
+"Thank God, a check," they said, "at last."
+"They cannot own it; you must cast."]
+
+    "They cannot own it; you must cast,"
+    Sir Peter said. The soft horn blew,
+    Tom turned the hounds up wind; they drew
+    Up wind, down hill, by spinney side.
+    They tried the brambled ditch; they tried
+    The swamp, all choked with bright green grass
+    And clumps of rush and pools like glass,
+    Long since, the dead men's drinking pond.
+    They tried the White Leaved Oak beyond,
+    But no hound spoke to it or feathered.
+    The horse heads drooped like horses tethered,
+    The men mopped brows. "An hour's hard run.
+    Ten miles," they said, "we must have done.
+    It's all of six from Colston's Gorses."
+    The lucky got their second horses.
+
+    The time ticked by. "He's lost," they muttered.
+    A pheasant rose. A rabbit scuttered.
+    Men mopped their scarlet cheeks and drank.
+    They drew down wind along the bank,
+    (The Wan Way) on the hill's south spur,
+    Grown with dwarf oak and juniper
+    Like dwarves alive, but no hound spoke.
+    The seepings made the ground one soak.
+    They turned the spur; the hounds were beat.
+    Then Robin shifted in his seat
+    Watching for signs, but no signs shewed.
+    "I'll lift across the Godsdown Road,
+    Beyond the spinney," Robin said.
+    Tom turned them; Robin went ahead.
+
+    Beyond the copse a great grass fallow
+    Stretched towards Stoke and Cheddesdon Mallow,
+    A rolling grass where hounds grew keen.
+    "Yoi doit, then; this is where he's been,"
+    Said Robin, eager at their joy.
+    "Yooi, Joyful, lad, yooi, Cornerboy.
+    They're on to him."
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+
+
+
+"ON"
+
+
+                      At his reminders
+    The keen hounds hurried to the finders.
+    The finding hounds began to hurry,
+    Men jammed their hats prepared to skurry,
+    The Ai Ai of the cry began.
+    Its spirit passed to horse and man,
+    The skirting hounds romped to the cry.
+    Hound after hound cried Ai Ai Ai,
+    Till all were crying, running, closing,
+    Their heads well up and no heads nosing,
+    Joyful ahead with spear-straight stern.
+    They raced the great slope to the burn.
+    Robin beside them, Tom behind,
+    Pointing past Robin down the wind.
+
+    For there, two furlongs on, he viewed
+    On Holy Hill or Cheddesdon Rood
+    Just where the ploughland joined the grass,
+    A speck down the first furrow pass,
+    A speck the colour of the plough.
+    "Yonder he goes. We'll have him now,"
+    He cried. The speck passed slowly on,
+    It reached the ditch, paused, and was gone.
+
+    Then down the slope and up the Rood,
+    Went the hunt's gallop. Godsdown Wood
+    Dropped its last oak-leaves at the rally.
+    Over the Rood to High Clench Valley
+    The gallop led; the red-coats scattered,
+    The fragments of the hunt were tattered
+    Over five fields, ev'n since the check.
+
+[Illustration:
+Then down the slope and up the Rood,
+Went the hunt's gallop.]
+
+    "A dead fox or a broken neck,"
+    Said Robin Dawe, "Come up, the Dane."
+    The hunter leant against the rein,
+    Cocking his ears, he loved to see
+    The hounds at cry. The hounds and he
+    The chiefs in all that feast of pace.
+
+    The speck in front began to race.
+    The fox heard hounds get on to his line,
+    And again the terror went down his spine,
+    Again the back of his neck felt cold,
+    From the sense of the hound's teeth taking hold.
+    But his legs were rested, his heart was good,
+    He had breath to gallop to Mourne End Wood,
+    It was four miles more, but an earth at end,
+    So he put on pace down the Rood Hill Bend.
+
+[Illustration: The fox heard hounds get on to his line]
+
+    Down the great grass slope which the oak trees dot
+    With a swerve to the right from the keeper's cot,
+    Over High Clench brook in its channel deep,
+    To the grass beyond, where he ran to sheep.
+    The sheep formed line like a troop of horse,
+    They swerved, as he passed, to front his course
+    From behind, as he ran, a cry arose,
+    "See the sheep, there. Watch them. There he goes."
+
+    He ran the sheep that their smell might check
+    The hounds from his scent and save his neck,
+    But in two fields more he was made aware
+    That the hounds still ran; Tom had viewed him there.
+
+[Illustration:
+He ran the sheep that their smell might check
+The hounds from his scent and save his neck.]
+
+    Tom had held them on through the taint of sheep,
+    They had kept his line, as they meant to keep,
+    They were running hard with a burning scent,
+    And Robin could see which way he went.
+    The pace that he went brought strain to breath,
+    He knew as he ran that the grass was death.
+    He ran the slope towards Morton Tew
+    That the heave of the hill might stop the view,
+    Then he doubled down to the Blood Brook red,
+    And swerved upstream in the brook's deep bed.
+
+    He splashed the shallows, he swam the deeps,
+    He crept by banks as a moorhen creeps,
+    He heard the hounds shoot over his line,
+    And go on, on, on towards Cheddesdon Zine.
+
+    In the minute's peace he could slacken speed,
+    The ease from the strain was sweet indeed.
+    Cool to the pads the water flowed,
+    He reached the bridge on the Cheddesdon road.
+
+    As he came to light from the culvert dim,
+    Two boys on the bridge looked down on him;
+    They were young Bill Ripple and Harry Meun,
+    "Look, there be squirrel, a-swimmin', see 'un."
+    "Noa, ben't a squirrel, be fox, be fox.
+    Now, Hal, get pebble, we'll give en socks."
+    "Get pebble, Billy, dub un a plaster;
+    There's for thy belly, I'll learn ee, master."
+
+[Illustration: He raced from brook in a burst of shies]
+
+    The stones splashed spray in the fox's eyes,
+    He raced from brook in a burst of shies,
+    He ran for the reeds in the withy car,
+    Where the dead flags shake and the wild-duck are.
+
+    He pushed through the reeds which cracked at his passing,
+    To the High Clench Water, a grey pool glassing,
+    He heard Bill Ripple in Cheddesdon road
+    Shout, "This way, huntsman, it's here he goed."
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFTING HORN
+
+
+    The Leu Leu Leu went the soft horn's laughter,
+    The hounds (they had checked) came romping after,
+    The clop of the hooves on the road was plain,
+    Then the crackle of reeds, then cries again.
+
+    A whimpering first, then Robin's cheer,
+    Then the Ai Ai Ai; they were all too near;
+    His swerve had brought but a minute's rest,
+    Now he ran again, and he ran his best.
+
+    With a crackle of dead dry stalks of reed
+    The hounds came romping at topmost speed,
+    The redcoats ducked as the great hooves skittered
+    The Blood Brook's shallows to sheets that glittered;
+    With a cracking whip and a "Hoik, Hoik, Hoik,
+    Forrard," Tom galloped. Bob shouted "Yoick."
+    Like a running fire the dead reeds crackled
+    The hounds' heads lifted, their necks were hackled.
+    Tom cried to Bob as they thundered through,
+    "He is running short, we shall kill at Tew."
+    Bob cried to Tom as they rode in team,
+    "I was sure, that time, that he turned up-stream.
+    As the hounds went over the brook in stride,
+    I saw old Daffodil fling to side,
+    So I guessed at once, when they checked beyond."
+    The ducks flew up from the Morton Pond.
+    The fox looked up at their tailing strings,
+    He wished (perhaps) that a fox had wings.
+    Wings with his friends in a great V straining
+    The autumn sky when the moon is gaining;
+    For better the grey sky's solitude,
+    Than to be two miles from the Mourne End Wood
+    With the hounds behind, clean-trained to run,
+    And your strength half spent and your breath half done.
+    Better the reeds and the sky and water
+    Than that hopeless pad from a certain slaughter.
+    At the Morton Pond the fields began,
+    Long Tew's green meadows; he ran; he ran.
+
+[Illustration:
+With a cracking whip and a "Hoik, Hoik, Hoik,
+Forrard," Tom galloped. Bob shouted "Yoick."]
+
+    First the six green fields that make a mile,
+    With the lip-full Clench at the side the while,
+    With the rooks above, slow-circling, shewing
+    The world of men where a fox was going;
+    The fields all empty, dead grass, bare hedges,
+    And the brook's bright gleam in the dark of sedges.
+    To all things else he was dumb and blind,
+    He ran, with the hounds a field behind.
+
+
+
+
+MOURNE END WOOD
+
+
+    At the sixth green field came the long slow climb,
+    To the Mourne End Wood as old as time
+    Yew woods dark, where they cut for bows,
+    Oak woods green with the mistletoes,
+    Dark woods evil, but burrowed deep
+    With a brock's earth strong, where a fox might sleep.
+    He saw his point on the heaving hill,
+    He had failing flesh and a reeling will,
+    He felt the heave of the hill grow stiff,
+    He saw black woods, which would shelter--
+      If--
+    Nothing else, but the steepening slope,
+    And a black line nodding, a line of hope,
+    The line of the yews on the long slope's brow,
+    A mile, three-quarters, a half-mile now.
+    A quarter-mile, but the hounds had viewed,
+    They yelled to have him this side the wood;
+    Robin capped them, Tom Dansey steered them
+    With a "Yooi, Yooi, Yooi," Bill Ridden cheered them.
+    Then up went hackles as Shatterer led,
+    "Mob him," cried Ridden, "the wood's ahead.
+    Turn him, damn it; Yooi, beauties, beat him.
+    O God, let them get him; let them eat him.
+    O God," said Ridden, "I'll eat him stewed,
+    If you'll let us get him this side the wood."
+
+    But the pace, uphill, made a horse like stone,
+    The pack went wild up the hill alone.
+    Three hundred yards, and the worst was past,
+    The slope was gentler and shorter-grassed,
+    The fox saw the bulk of the woods grow tall
+    On the brae ahead like a barrier-wall.
+    He saw the skeleton trees show sky,
+    And the yew trees darken to see him die,
+    And the line of the woods go reeling black,
+    There was hope in the woods, and behind, the pack.
+
+    Two hundred yards, and the trees grew taller,
+    Blacker, blinder, as hope grew smaller
+    Cry seemed nearer, the teeth seemed gripping
+    Pulling him back, his pads seemed slipping.
+    He was all one ache, one gasp, one thirsting,
+    Heart on his chest-bones, beating, bursting,
+    The hounds were gaining like spotted pards
+    And the wood-hedge still was a hundred yards.
+    The wood-hedge black was a two year, quick
+    Cut-and-laid that had sprouted thick
+    Thorns all over, and strongly plied,
+    With a clean red ditch on the take-off side.
+
+    He saw it now as a redness, topped
+    With a wattle of thorn-work spiky cropped,
+    Spiky to leap on, stiff to force,
+    No safe jump for a failing horse,
+    But beyond it, darkness of yews together,
+    Dark green plumes over soft brown feather,
+    Darkness of woods where scents were blowing
+    Strange scents, hot scents, of wild things going,
+    Scents that might draw these hounds away.
+    So he ran, ran, ran to that clean red clay.
+
+[Illustration:
+He saw it now as a redness, topped
+With a wattle of thorn-work spiky cropped.]
+
+    Still, as he ran, his pads slipped back,
+    All his strength seemed to draw the pack,
+    The trees drew over him dark like Norns,
+    He was over the ditch and at the thorns.
+
+    He thrust at the thorns, which would not yield,
+    He leaped, but fell, in sight of the field,
+    The hounds went wild as they saw him fall,
+    The fence stood stiff like a Bucks flint wall.
+
+    He gathered himself for a new attempt,
+    His life before was an old dream dreamt,
+    All that he was was a blown fox quaking,
+    Jumping at thorns too stiff for breaking,
+    While over the grass in crowd, in cry,
+    Came the grip teeth grinning to make him die,
+    The eyes intense, dull, smouldering red,
+    The fell like a ruff round each keen head,
+    The pace like fire, and scarlet men
+    Galloping, yelling, "Yooi, eat him, then."
+    He gathered himself, he leaped, he reached
+    The top of the hedge like a fish-boat beached,
+    He steadied a second and then leaped down
+    To the dark of the wood where bright things drown.
+
+    He swerved, sharp right, under young green firs.
+    Robin called on the Dane with spurs,
+    He cried "Come, Dansey: if God's not good,
+    We shall change our fox in this Mourne End wood."
+    Tom cried back as he charged like spate,
+    "Mine can't jump that, I must ride to gate."
+    Robin answered, "I'm going at him.
+    I'll kill that fox, if he kills me, drat him.
+    We'll kill in covert. Gerr on, now, Dane."
+    He gripped him tight and he made it plain,
+    He slowed him down till he almost stood
+    While his hounds went crash into Mourne End Wood.
+
+    Like a dainty dancer with footing nice,
+    The Dane turned side for a leap in twice.
+    He cleared the ditch to the red clay bank,
+    He rose at the fence as his quarters sank,
+    He barged the fence as the bank gave way
+    And down he came in a fall of clay.
+
+    Robin jumped off him and gasped for breath;
+    He said, "That's lost him, as sure as death.
+    They've over-run him. Come up, the Dane,
+    But I'll kill him yet, if we ride to Spain."
+
+    He scrambled up to his horse's back,
+    He thrust through cover, he called his pack,
+    He cheered them on till they made it good,
+    Where the fox had swerved inside the wood.
+    The fox knew well, as he ran the dark,
+    That the headlong hounds were past their mark.
+    They had missed his swerve and had overrun.
+    But their devilish play was not yet done.
+
+
+
+
+"DONE"
+
+
+    For a minute he ran and heard no sound,
+    Then a whimper came from a questing hound,
+    Then a "This way, beauties," and then "Leu Leu,"
+    The floating laugh of the horn that blew.
+    Then the cry again and the crash and rattle
+    Of the shrubs burst back as they ran to battle.
+    Till the wood behind seemed risen from root,
+    Crying and crashing to give pursuit,
+    Till the trees seemed hounds and the air seemed cry,
+    And the earth so far that he needs but die,
+    Die where he reeled in the woodland dim
+    With a hound's white grips in the spine of him;
+    For one more burst he could spurt, and then
+    Wait for the teeth, and the wrench, and men.
+
+    He made his spurt for the Mourne End rocks,
+    The air blew rank with the taint of fox;
+    The yews gave way to a greener space
+    Of great stones strewn in a grassy place.
+    And there was his earth at the great grey shoulder,
+    Sunk in the ground, of a granite boulder
+    A dry deep burrow with rocky roof,
+    Proof against crowbars, terrier-proof,
+    Life to the dying, rest for bones.
+
+    The earth was stopped; it was filled with stones.
+
+    Then, for a moment, his courage failed,
+    His eyes looked up as his body quailed,
+    Then the coming of death, which all things dread,
+    Made him run for the wood ahead.
+
+[Illustration: There were foxes there]
+
+    The taint of fox was rank on the air,
+    He knew, as he ran, there were foxes there.
+    His strength was broken, his heart was bursting,
+    His bones were rotten, his throat was thirsting,
+    His feet were reeling, his brush was thick
+    From dragging the mud, and his brain was sick.
+    He thought as he ran of his old delight
+    In the wood in the moon in an April night,
+    His happy hunting, his winter loving,
+    The smells of things in the midnight roving;
+    The look of his dainty-nosing, red
+    Clean-felled dam with her footpad's tread,
+    Of his sire, so swift, so game, so cunning
+    With craft in his brain and power of running,
+    Their fights of old when his teeth drew blood.
+    Now he was sick, with his coat all mud.
+
+    He crossed the covert, he crawled the bank,
+    To a meuse in the thorns and there he sank,
+    With his ears flexed back and his teeth shown white,
+    In a rat's resolve for a dying bite.
+
+
+
+
+PRIZE
+
+
+    And there, as he lay, he saw the vale,
+    That a struggling sunlight silvered pale,
+    The Deerlip Brook like a strip of steel,
+    The Nun's Wood Yews where the rabbits squeal,
+    The great grass square of the Roman Fort,
+    And the smoke in the elms at Crendon Court.
+
+    And above the smoke in the elm-tree tops,
+    Was the beech-clump's blue, Blown Hilcote Copse,
+    Where he and his mates had long made merry
+    In the bloody joys of the rabbit-herry.
+
+    And there as he lay and looked, the cry
+    Of the hounds at head came rousing by;
+    He bent his bones in the blackthorn dim.
+    But the cry of the hounds was not for him,
+    Over the fence with a crash they went,
+    Belly to grass, with a burning scent,
+    Then came Dansey, yelling to Bob,
+    "They've changed, O damn it, now here's a job."
+    And Bob yelled back, "Well, we cannot turn 'em,
+    It's Jumper and Antic, Tom; we'll learn 'em.
+    We must just go on, and I hope we kill."
+    They followed hounds down the Mourne End Hill.
+    The fox lay still in the rabbit-meuse,
+    On the dry brown dust of the plumes of yews.
+    In the bottom below a brook went by,
+    Blue, in a patch, like a streak of sky.
+    There, one by one, with a clink of stone,
+    Came a red or dark coat on a horse half blown.
+    And man to man with a gasp for breath
+    Said, "Lord, what a run. I'm fagged to death."
+
+[Illustration:
+And man to man with a gasp for breath
+Said, "Lord, what a run. I'm fagged to death."]
+
+    After an hour, no riders came,
+    The day drew by like an ending game;
+    A robin sang from a pufft red breast,
+    The fox lay quiet and took his rest.
+    A wren on a tree-stump carolled clear,
+    Then the starlings wheeled in a sudden sheer,
+    The rooks came home to the twiggy hive
+    In the elm-tree tops which the winds do drive.
+    Then the noise of the rooks fell slowly still,
+    And the lights came out in the Clench Brook Mill
+    Then a pheasant cocked, then an owl began
+    With the cry that curdles the blood of man.
+
+    The stars grew bright as the yews grew black,
+    The fox rose stiffly and stretched his back.
+    He flaired the air, then he padded out
+    To the valley below him dark as doubt,
+    Winter-thin with the young green crops,
+    For Old Cold Crendon and Hilcote Copse.
+
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+
+[Illustration: Reynard the fox]
+
+    As he crossed the meadows at Naunton Larking,
+    The dogs in the town all started barking,
+    For with feet all bloody and flanks all foam,
+    The hounds and the hunt were limping home:
+    Limping home in the dark, dead-beaten,
+    The hounds all rank from a fox they'd eaten,
+    Dansey saying to Robin Dawe,
+    "The fastest and longest I ever saw."
+    And Robin answered, "O Tom, 'twas good,
+    I thought they'd changed in the Mourne End Wood,
+    But now I feel that they did not change.
+    We've had a run that was great and strange;
+    And to kill in the end, at dusk, on grass.
+    We'll turn to the Cock and take a glass,
+    For the hounds, poor souls, are past their forces.
+    And a gallon of ale for our poor horses,
+    And some bits of bread for the hounds, poor things,
+    After all they've done (for they've done like kings),
+    Would keep them going till we get in.
+    We had it alone from Nun's Wood Whin."
+    Then Tom replied, "If they changed or not,
+    There've been few runs longer and none more hot,
+    We shall talk of to-day until we die."
+
+[Illustration:
+For with feet all bloody and flanks all foam,
+The hounds and the hunt were limping home.]
+
+    The stars grew bright in the winter sky,
+    The wind came keen with a tang of frost,
+    The brook was troubled for new things lost,
+    The copse was happy for old things found,
+    The fox came home and he went to ground.
+    And the hunt came home and the hounds were fed,
+    They climbed to their bench and went to bed,
+    The horses in stable loved their straw.
+    "Good-night, my beauties," said Robin Dawe.
+
+    Then the moon came quiet and flooded full
+    Light and beauty on clouds like wool,
+    On a feasted fox at rest from hunting,
+    In the beech wood grey where the brocks were grunting.
+
+[Illustration: Eighth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son,
+New York_]
+
+    The beech wood grey rose dim in the night
+    With moonlight fallen in pools of light,
+    The long dead leaves on the ground were rimed.
+    A clock struck twelve and the church-bells chimed.
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
+
+All author's punctuations retained.
+
+All apparent printer's errors and variable spellings retained, including
+variable usage of hyphen (e.g. "goodwill" and "good-will") and any other
+variable spellings.
+
+Descriptions added to captionless illustrations.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Reynard the Fox, by John Masefield
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