Selected Poems

by John Masefield

On old Cold Crendon’s windy tops
Grows wintrily Blown Hilcote Copse,
Wind-bitten beech with badger barrows,
Where brocks eat wasp-grubs with their marrows,
And foxes lie on short-grassed turf,
Nose between paws, to hear the surf
Of wind in the beeches drowsily.
There was our fox bred lustily
Three years before, and there he berthed,
Under the beech-roots snugly earthed,
With a roof of flint and a floor of chalk
And ten bitten hens’ heads each on its stalk,
Some rabbits’ paws, some fur from scuts,
A badger’s corpse and a smell of guts.
And there on the night before my tale
He trotted out for a point in the vale.
* * * *
He saw, from the cover edge, the valley
Go trooping down with its droops of sally
To the brimming river’s lipping bend,
And a light in the inn at Water’s End.
He heard the owl go hunting by
And the shriek of the mouse the owl made die,
And the purr of the owl as he tore the red
Strings from between his claws and fed;
The smack of joy of the horny lips
Marbled green with the blobby strips.
He saw the farms where the dogs were barking,
Cold Crendon Court and Copsecote Larking;
The fault with the spring as bright as gleed,
Green-slash-laced with water-weed.
A glare in the sky still marked the town,
Though all folk slept and the blinds were down,
The street lamps watched the empty square,
The night-cat sang his evil there.
* * * *
The fox’s nose tipped up and round,
Since smell is a part of sight and sound.
Delicate smells were drifting by,
The sharp nose flaired them heedfully;
Partridges in the clover stubble,
Crouched in a ring for the stoat to nubble.
Rabbit bucks beginning to box;
A scratching place for the pheasant cocks,
A hare in the dead grass near the drain,
And another smell like the spring again.
* * * *
A faint rank taint like April coming,
It touched his heart till his blood went drumming,
For somewhere out by Ghost Heath Stubs
Was a roving vixen wanting cubs.
Over the valley, floating faint
On a warmth of windflaw, came the taint;
He cocked his ears, he upped his brush,
And he went upwind like an April thrush.
* * * *
By the Roman Road to Braiches Ridge,
Where the fallen willow makes a bridge,
Over the brook by White Hart’s Thorn
To the acres thin with pricking corn,
Over the sparse green hair of the wheat,
By the Clench Brook Mill at Clench Brook Leat,
Through Cowfoot Pastures to Nonely Stevens,
And away to Poltrewood St. Jevons.
Past Tott Hill Down all snaked with meuses,
Past Clench St. Michael and Naunton Crucis,
Past Howle’s Oak Farm where the raving brain
Of a dog who heard him foamed his chain;
Then off, as the farmer’s window opened,
Past Stonepits Farm to Upton Hope End,
Over short sweet grass and worn flint arrows
And the three dumb hows of Tencombe Barrows.
And away and away with a rolling scramble,
Through the sally and up the bramble,
With a nose for the smells the night wind carried,
And his red fell clean for being married;
For clicketting time and Ghost Heath Wood
Had put the violet in his blood.
* * * *
At Tencombe Rings near the Manor Linney
His foot made the great black stallion whinny,
And the stallion’s whinny aroused the stable
And the bloodhound bitches stretched their cable,
And the clink of the bloodhounds’ chain aroused
The sweet-breathed kye as they chewed and drowsed,
And the stir of the cattle changed the dream
Of the cat in the loft to tense green gleam.
The red-wattled black cock hot from Spain
Crowed from his perch for dawn again,
His breast-pufft hens, one-legged on perch,
Gurgled, beak-down, like men in church,
They crooned in the dark, lifting one red eye
In the raftered roost as the fox went by.
* * * *
By Tencombe Regis and Slaughters Court,
Through the great grass square of Roman Fort,
By Nun’s Wood Yews and the Hungry Hill,
And the Corpse Way Stones all standing still.
By Seven Springs Mead to Deerlip Brook,
And a lolloping leap to Water Hook.
Then with eyes like sparks and his blood awoken,
Over the grass to Water’s Oaken,
And over the hedge and into ride
In Ghost Heath Wood for his roving bride.
* * * *
Before the dawn he had loved and fed
And found a kennel, and gone to bed
On a shelf of grass in a thick of gorse
That would bleed a hound and blind a horse.
There he slept in the mild west weather
With his nose and brush well tuckt together,
He slept like a child, who sleeps yet hears
With the self who needs neither eyes nor ears.
* * * *
He slept while the pheasant cock untucked
His head from his wing, flew down and kukked,
While the drove of the starlings whirred and wheeled
Out of the ash-trees into field,
While with great black flags that flogged and paddled
The rooks went out to the plough and straddled,
Straddled wide on the moist red cheese
Of the furrows driven at Uppat’s Leas.
* * * *
Down in the village men awoke,
The chimneys breathed with a faint blue smoke.
The fox slept on, though tweaks and twitches,
Due to his dreams, ran down his flitches.
* * * *
The cows were milked and the yards were sluict,
And cocks and hens let out of roost,
Windows were opened, mats were beaten,
All men’s breakfasts were cooked and eaten;
But out in the gorse on the grassy shelf
The sleeping fox looked after himself.
* * * *
Deep in his dream he heard the life
Of the woodland seek for food or wife,
The hop of a stoat, a buck that thumped,
The squeal of a rat as a weasel jumped,
The blackbird’s chackering scattering crying,
The rustling bents from the rabbits flying,
Cows in a byre, and distant men,
And Condicote church-clock striking ten.
* * * *
At eleven o’clock a boy went past,
With a rough-haired terrier following fast.
The boy’s sweet whistle and dog’s quick yap
Woke the fox from out of his nap.
* * * *
He rose and stretched till the claws in his pads
Stuck hornily out like long black gads.
He listened a while, and his nose went round
To catch the smell of the distant sound.
* * * *
The windward smells came free from taint—
They were rabbit, strongly, with lime-kiln, faint,
A wild-duck, likely, at Sars Holt Pond,
And sheep on the Sars Holt Down beyond.
* * * *
The leeward smells were much less certain,
For the Ghost Heath Hill was like a curtain,
Yet vague, from the leeward, now and then,
Came muffled sounds like the sound of men.
* * * *
He moved to his right to a clearer space,
And all his soul came into his face,
Into his eyes and into his nose,
As over the hill a murmur rose.
His ears were cocked and his keen nose flaired,
He sneered with his lips till his teeth were bared,
He trotted right and lifted a pad
Trying to test what foes he had.
* * * *
On Ghost Heath turf was a steady drumming
Which sounded like horses quickly coming,
It died as the hunt went down the dip,
Then Malapert yelped at Myngs’s whip.
A bright iron horseshoe clinkt on stone,
Then a man’s voice spoke, not one alone,
Then a burst of laughter, swiftly still,
Muffled away by Ghost Heath Hill.
Then, indistinctly, the clop, clip, clep,
On Brady Ride, of a horse’s step.
Then silence, then, in a burst, much clearer,
Voices and horses coming nearer,
And another noise, of a pit-pat beat
On the Ghost Hill grass, of foxhound feet.
* * * *
He sat on his haunches listening hard,
While his mind went over the compass card.
Men were coming and rest was done,
But he still had time to get fit to run;
He could outlast horse and outrace hound,
But men were devils from Lobs’s Pound.
Scent was burning, the going good,
The world one lust for a fox’s blood,
The main earths stopped and the drains put to,
And fifteen miles to the land he knew.
But of all the ills, the ill least pleasant
Was to run in the light when men were present
Men in the fields to shout and sign
For a lift of hounds to a fox’s line.
Men at the earth, at the long point’s end,
Men at each check and none his friend,
Guessing each shift that a fox contrives;
But still, needs must when the devil drives.
* * * *
He readied himself, then a soft horn blew,
Then a clear voice carolled, “Ed-hoick! Eleu!”
Then the wood-end rang with the clear voice crying
And the crackle of scrub where hounds were trying.
Then the horn blew nearer, a hound’s voice quivered,
Then another, then more, till his body shivered,
He left his kennel and trotted thence
With his ears flexed back and his nerves all tense.

He trotted down with his nose intent
For a fox’s line to cross his scent,
It was only fair (he being a stranger)
That the native fox should have the danger.
Danger was coming, so swift, so swift,
That the pace of his trot began to lift
The blue-winged Judas, a jay began
Swearing, hounds whimpered, air stank of man.
* * * *
He hurried his trotting, he now felt frighted,
It was his poor body made hounds excited.
He felt as he ringed the great wood through,
That he ought to make for the land he knew.
* * * *
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.
* * * *
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 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.
* * * *
The fox sneaked down by the cover side
(With his ears flexed back) as a snake would glide;
He took the ditch at the cover-end,
He hugged the ditch as his only friend.
The blackbird cock with the golden beak
Got out of his way with a jabbering shriek,
And the shriek told Tom on the raking bay
That for eighteenpence he was gone away.
* * * *
He ran in the hedge in the triple growth
Of bramble and hawthorn, glad of both,
Till a couple of fields were past, and then
Came the living death of the dread of men.
* * * *
Then, as he listened, he heard a “Hoy!”
Tom Dansey’s horn and “Awa-wa-woy!”
Then all hounds crying with all their forces,
Then a thundering down of seventy horses.
Robin Dawe’s horn and halloos of “Hey
Hark Hollar, Hoik!” and “Gone away!”
“Hark Hollar Hoik!” and a smack of the whip.
A yelp as a tail hound caught the clip.
“Hark Hollar, Hark Hollar!” then Robin made
Pip go crash through the cut and laid.
Hounds were over and on his line
With a head like bees upon Tipple Tine.
The sound of the nearness sent a flood
Of terror of death through the fox’s blood.
He upped his brush and he cocked his nose,
And he went upwind as a racer goes.
* * * *
Bold Robin Dawe was over first,
Cheering his hounds on at the burst;
The field were spurring to be in it.
“Hold hard, sirs, give them half a minute,”
Came from Sir Peter on his white.
The hounds went romping with delight
Over the grass and got together,
The tail hounds galloped hell-for-leather
After the pack at Myngs’s yell.
A cry like every kind of bell
Rang from these rompers as they raced.
* * * *
The riders, thrusting to be placed,
Jammed down their hats and shook their horses;
The hounds romped past with all their forces,
They crashed into the blackthorn fence.
The scent was heavy on their sense,
So hot, it seemed the living thing,
It made the blood within them sing;
Gusts of it made their hackles rise,
Hot gulps of it were agonies
Of joy, and thirst for blood and passion.
“Forrard!” cried Robin, “that’s the fashion.”
He raced beside his pack to cheer.

The field’s noise died upon his ear,
A faint horn, far behind, blew thin
In cover, lest some hound were in.
Then instantly the great grass rise
Shut field and cover from his eyes,
He and his racers were alone.
“A dead fox or a broken bone.”
Said Robin, peering for his prey.
* * * *
The rise, which shut the field away,
Showed him the vale’s great map spread out,
The down’s lean flank and thrusting snout,
Pale pastures, red-brown plough, dark wood,
Blue distance, still as solitude,
Glitter of water here and there,
The trees so delicately bare,
The dark green gorse and bright green holly.
“O glorious God,” he said, “how jolly!”
And there downhill two fields ahead
The lolloping red dog-fox sped
Over Poor Pastures to the brook.
He grasped these things in one swift look,
Then dived into the bullfinch heart
Through thorns that ripped his sleeves apart
And skutched new blood upon his brow.
“His point’s Lark’s Leybourne Covers now,”
Said Robin, landing with a grunt.
“Forrard, my beautifuls!”

The hunt
Followed downhill to race with him,
White Rabbit, with his swallow’s skim,
Drew within hail. “Quick burst, Sir Peter.”
“A traveller. Nothing could be neater.
Making for Godsdown Clumps, I take it?”
“Lark’s Leybourne, sir, if he can make it.
Forrard!”

Bill Ridden thundered down,
His big mouth grinned beneath his frown,
The hounds were going away from horses.
He saw the glint of watercourses,
Yell Brook and Wittold’s Dyke, ahead,
His horseshoes sliced the green turf red.
Young Cothill’s chaser rushed and past him,
Nob Manor, running next, said “Blast him!
The poet chap who thinks he rides.”
Hugh Colway’s mare made straking strides
Across the grass, the Colonel next,
Then Squire, volleying oaths, and vext,
Fighting his hunter for refusing;
Bell Ridden, like a cutter cruising,
Sailing the grass; then Cob on Warder,
Then Minton Price upon Marauder;
Ock Gurney with his eyes intense,
Burning as with a different sense,
His big mouth muttering glad “By damns!”
Then Pete, crouched down from head to hams,
Rapt like a saint, bright focussed flame;
Bennett, with devils in his wame,
Chewing black cud and spitting slanting;
Copse scattering jests and Stukely ranting;
Sal Ridden taking line from Dansey;
Long Robert forcing Necromancy;
A dozen more with bad beginnings;
Myngs riding hard to snatch an innings.
A wild last hound with high shrill yelps
Smacked forrard with some whipthong skelps.
Then last of all, at top of rise,
The crowd on foot, all gasps and eyes;
The run up hill had winded them.
* * * *
They saw the Yell Brook like a gem
Blue in the grass a short mile on;
They heard faint cries, but hounds were gone
A good eight fields and out of sight,
Except a rippled glimmer white
Going away with dying cheering,
And scarlet flappings disappearing,
And scattering horses going, going,
Going like mad, White Rabbit snowing
Far on ahead, a loose horse taking
Fence after fence with stirrups shaking,
And scarlet specks and dark specks dwindling.
* * * *
Nearer, were twigs knocked into kindling,
A much bashed fence still dropping stick,
Flung clods still quivering from the kick;
Cut hoof-marks pale in cheesy clay,
The horse-smell blowing clean away;
Birds flitting back into the cover.
One last faint cry, then all was over.
The hunt had been, and found, and gone.

* * * *

Selections from
ENSLAVED

All early in the April, when daylight comes at five,
I went into the garden most glad to be alive;
The thrushes and the blackbirds were singing in the thorn,
The April flowers were singing for joy of being born.

I smelt the dewy morning come blowing through the woods
Where all the wilding cherries do toss their snowy snoods;
I thought of the running water where sweet white violets grow.
I said: “I’ll pick them for her; because she loves them so.”

So in the dewy morning I turned to climb the hill,
Beside the running water whose tongue is never still.
Oh, delicate green and dewy were all the budding trees;
The blue dog-violets grew there, and many primroses.