Hunting Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

The wind in the south, and the first faint blushes
Of morn amid clouds dispers'd,
As a stream in its strength through a floodgate rushes,
The hounds from their kennel burst.

II

The huntsman is up on his favourite bay,
The whips are all astride,
Leisurely trotting their onward way
To the distant cover side.

III

Sweetly the blackbird, and sweetly the thrush,
Greeting them, seem to say,
In the chorus that rings from each hawthorn bush,
“Good sport to the pack to-day.”

IV

Lads from the village now after them race,
Asking with eager shout,
And ruddy with joy at the thoughts of a chace,
“Where do the hounds turn out?”

V

Now masking the slope with its dusky screen,
A wood in front appears,
And a Hall high-gabled the glittering sheen
Of its vane-deck'd turret rears.

VI

The chimney-shafts, wreathed with smoke, betoken
Full many a guest within,
While words of welcome in honesty spoken
The heart of each stranger win.

VII

A white hand unlatches her casement bar;
A murmur of joy resounds:

They're coming! they're coming! see, yonder they are!
They're coming! the hounds! the hounds!

VIII

A cloud, so it seem'd, might have dropp'd from the sky
When the sun was in the west,
To clothe with a mantle of crimson dye
The lawn by those riders prest.

IX

Steadily, steadily, to and fro,
Old hunters pace the ground;
Heads high in air the young ones throw,
Pawing and plunging round.

X

See! to unkennel a noisier pack,
The school-gate open flung,
By the desk-weary pedant, whose heart leaps back
To the day when himself was young.

XI

Drest in the pride of her Sunday array,
The huswife stands aloof,
Timidly plucking her child away
From the lunge of uplifted hoof.

XII

Curb'd for that hand which the casement unbarr'd,
To the porch is a palfrey led,
The trim gravel court by the prancing scarr'd
Of his proud and impatient tread;

XIII

A fair-hair'd youth to the portal flew,
And stood by her bridle-rein;
He lifts her light foot to the stirrup-shoe,
And they follow the hunting-train.

XIV

His saddle-bow hung with a silver horn,
All eyes on the master gaze,
Lord of the hunting-field! monarch, this morn,
Of all that he surveys!

XV

The Huntsman has drunk to the health of the Squire
From the depth of the leathern jack,
And lifting his cap, as the gentry admire
His well-condition'd pack,

XVI

He speeds, with sure hope, to the cover hard by—
Streaking the greenwood now,
Red coats bright with the berries vie
That hang on the holly bough.

XVII

Hark! from the cover a fox halloo'd;
The hounds to the open fly;
Horses and men, as they crash through the wood,
Made mad by the merry cry.

XVIII

Fainter and fainter in distance died
The tumult of the chace;
Till silent as death was the green hill-side,
The Hall a deserted place.

XIX

I follow them not; the good fox they found
Sped many a mile away;
That run was the talk of the country round
For many an after day.

XX

The brush by that youth who had ridden hard,
Brought home in the twilight hour,
A gift for the hand which the casement unbarr'd,
Was hung in the maiden's bower.