Classic Poem

A colour-print for Christmas . . . Up the rise
Of rich green pasture move quick-clustering hounds
And red-coat riders. Crocus-yellow dyes
A patch of sunset laced by leafless trees.
One wavering tootle from the huntsman sounds
A mort for " most unsatisfactory sport."
And draws the pack's last straggling absentees
Out of the glooming purple of the covert
Sad trails the cadent peeweep of a plover
Above the dim wet meadows by the brook,
While evening founders with a glowering look.
Clip-clop; along the glistening-puddled lane
The kennelward hoofs retreat. Night falls with rain.

Refortified by exercise and air,
I, jogging home astride my chestnut mare,
Grow half-humane, and question the propriety
Of Foxes Torn to Bits in Smart Society .

Spurts past me Fernie-Goldflake in his car . . .
I wonder if these Nimrods really are
Crassly unconscious that their Reynardism
Is (dare I say it?) an anachronism.
Can they rebut my heterodox defiance
Of Hoick and Holloa as a Social Science ?
Or do they inwardly prognosticate
The Last (blank) Day; green shires degenerate
With unmolested poultry; drag-hound packs
Racing a bloodless aniseed aroma,
While cockney Gilpins gallop in their tracks;
And British Foxes, mythical as Homer,
Centuries-extinct, their odysseys forgotten.

My friends the Fernie-Goldflakes think me mad
" Extinct! The idea's preposterous! It's rotten
With every sort of Socialistic fad!"

Shelley was called " an atheistic worm"
By Goldflake's grandpapa . . .
Stands Shelley firm?