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.
FOUND
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 the 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.