  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. 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 eighteen pence he was gone away. The blackbird got out of his way with a jabbering shriek 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 the smack of a 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 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 up wind as a racer goes. |
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