Selections from REYNARD THE FOX

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 touched his heart till his blood went drumming, For somewhere out by Ghost Heath Stubs Was a roving vixen wanting cubs. Over the valley, floating faint On a warmth of windflaw, came the taint; He cocked his ears, he upped his brush, And he went upwind 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 sally 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. * * * * 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 bloodhounds’ 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 tuckt together, He slept like a child, who sleeps yet hears With the self who needs neither eyes nor ears. * * * * 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. * * * * The cows were milked and the yards were sluict, And 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. * * * * 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 leeward smells were much less certain, For the Ghost Heath Hill was like a curtain, Yet vague, from the leeward, 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. * * * * 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. * * * * 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. 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. * * * * 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. * * * * 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 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 eighteenpence he was gone away. * * * * 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 a smack of the 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 upwind as a racer goes. * * * * 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. “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 the field away, Showed him the vale’s great map spread out, The down’s 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 downhill 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 bullfinch 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 downhill 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!” Bill Ridden thundered down, His big mouth grinned beneath his frown, The hounds were going away from horses. He saw the glint of watercourses, Yell Brook and Wittold’s Dyke, ahead, His horseshoes sliced the green turf red. Young Cothill’s chaser rushed and past him, Nob Manor, running next, said “Blast him! The 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 whipthong 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. * * * * 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. * * * *