Classic Poem

By this, she hears the hounds are at a bay;
Whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder
Wreathed up in fatal folds just in his way,
The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder,
Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds
Appals her senses and her spright confounds.

For now she knows it is no gentle chase,
But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud,
Because the cry remaineth in one place,
Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud:
Finding their enemy to be so cursed
They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first.


Here kennelled in a brake she finds a hound,
And asks the weary caitiff for his master,
And there another licking of his wound,
'Gainst venomed sores the only sovereign plaster
And here she meets another sadly scowling,
To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,
Another flap-mouthed mourner, black and grim,
Against the welkin volleys out his voice;
Another and another answer him,
Clapping their proud tails to the ground below.
Shaking their scratched ears, bleeding as they go.