THE OLD SQUIRE
by: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
(1840-1922)
- LIKE
the hunting of the hare
- Better than that of the fox;
- I like the joyous morning air,
- And the crowing of the cocks.
-
- I like the calm of the early fields,
- The ducks asleep by the lake,
- The quiet hour which Nature yields,
- Before mankind is awake.
-
- I like the pheasants and feeding things
- Of the unsuspicious morn;
- I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings
- As she rises from the corn.
-
- I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush
- From the turnips as I pass by,
- And the partridge hiding her head in a bush
- For her young ones cannot fly.
-
- I like these things, and I like to ride
- When all the world is in bed,
- To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide,
- And where the sun grows red.
-
- The beagles at my horse heels trot
- In silence after me;
- There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot,
- Old Slut and Margery,--
-
- A score of names well used, and dear,
- The names my childhood knew;
- The horn, with which I rouse their cheer,
- Is the horn my father blew.
-
- I like the hunting of the hare
- Better than that of the fox;
- The new world still is all less fair
- Than the old world it mocks.
-
- I covet not a wider range
- Than these dear manors give;
- I take my pleasures without change,
- And as I lived I live.
-
- I leave my neighbors to their thoughts;
- My choice it is, and pride,
- On my own lands to find my sport,
- In my own fields to ride.
-
- The hare herself no better loves
- The field where she was bred,
- Than I the habit of these groves,
- My own inherited.
-
- I know my quarries every one,
- The meuse where she sits low;
- The rode she chose to-day was run
- A hundred years ago.
-
- The lags, the gills, the forest ways,
- The hedgerows one and all,
- These are the kingdoms of my chase,
- And bounded by my wall;
-
- Nor has the world a better thing,
- Though one should search it round,
- Than thus to live one's own sole king,
- Upon one's own sole ground.
-
- I like the hunting of the hare;
- It brings me, day to day,
- The memory of old days as fair,
- With dead men past away.
-
- To these, as homeward still I ply
- And pass the churchyard gate
- Where all are laid as I must lie,
- I stop and raise my hat.
-
- I like the hunting of the hare;
- New sports I hold in scorn.
- I like to be as my fathers were,
- In the days e'er I was born.
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