PART TWO — THE FOX

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 cocked his ears and his blood went drumming,

For somewhere out by Ghost Heath Stubs

Was a roving vixen wanting cubs.