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John Masefield - Reynard The Fox - Part 2
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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." 
    
"They cannot own it; you must cast," 
Sir Peter said. The soft horn blew, 
Tom turned the hounds upwind. They drew 
Upwind, downhill, 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 downwind 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 showed. 
"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 do it, then! This is where he`s been," 
Said Robin, eager at their joy.
"Yooi, Joyful, lad! Yooi, Cornerboy ! 
They`re on to him." 
At his reminders 
The keen hounds hurried to the finders. 
The finding hounds began to hurry, 
Men jammed their hats, prepared to scurry.
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 plough land 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 redcoats scattered, 
The fragments of the hunt were tattered 
Over five fields, ev`n since the check. 
“A dead fox or a broken neck," 
Said Robin Dawe. "Come up, the Dane." 
The hunter lent 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. 
    
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. 
    
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." 
    
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, huntsmen, it`s here he goed."
    
Then "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 upstream. 
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.
    
First the six green fields that make a mile, 
With the lip-ful Clench at the side the while, 
With rooks above, slow-circling, showing 
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.
    
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! 
0 God, let them get him: let them eat him! 
0 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 thjck 
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. 
    
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. 
    
I 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 it 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 overrun him. Come up, the Dane. 
We`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. 
    
For a minute he ran and he 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 a 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. 
    
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. 
    
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 blur, 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! Oh, 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." 
    
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 stifly 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. 
    
As he crossed the meadows at Naunton Larking 
The dogs in 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: "Oh, 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 the 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." 
    
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. 
    
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.
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