Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1035

 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

The hare herself no better loves The field where she was bred,

Than I the habit of these groves, My own inherited.

I know my quarries every one, The meuse where she sits low;

The road she chose to-day was run A hundred years ago.

The lags, the gills, the forest ways,

The hedgerows one and all, These are the kingdoms of my chase,

And bounded by my wall,

Nor has the world a better thing, Though one should search it round,

Than thus to live one's own sole king, Upon one's own sole ground.

I like the hunting of the hare;

It brings me, day by day, The memory of old days as fair,

With dead men past away.

To these, ab homeward still I ply And pass the churchyard gate

Where all are laid as I must lie, I stop and raise my hat.

I like the hunting of the hare;

New sports 1 hold m scorn. I like to be as my fathers were,

In the days e'er I was born.

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