REYNARD THE FOX

The meet was at “The Cock and Pye

By Charles and Martha Enderby,”

The grey, three-hundred-year-old inn

Long since the haunt of Benjamin

The highwayman, who rode the bay.

The tavern fronts the coaching way,

The mail changed horses there of old.

It has a strip of grassy mould

In front of it, a broad green strip.

A trough, where horses’ muzzles dip,

Stands opposite the tavern front,

And there that morning came the hunt,

To fill that quiet width of road

As full of men as Framilode

Is full of sea when tide is in.

The stables were alive with din

From dawn until the time of meeting.

A pad-groom gave a cloth a beating,

Knocking the dust out with a stake.

Two men cleaned stalls with fork and rake,

And one went whistling to the pump,

The handle whined, ker-lump, ker-lump,

The water splashed into the pail,

And, as he went, it left a trail,

Lipped over on the yard's bricked paving.

Two grooms ( sent on before ) were shaving

There in the yard, at glasses propped

On jutting bricks; they scraped and stropped,

And felt their chins and leaned and peered,

A woodland day was what they feared

( As second horsemen ), shaving there.

Then, in the stalls where hunters were,

Straw rustled as the horses shifted,

The hayseeds ticked and haystraws drifted

From racks as horses tugged their feed.

Slow gulping sounds of steady greed

Came from each stall, and sometimes stampings,

Whinnies ( at well-known steps ) and rampings

To see the horse in the next stall.

Outside, the spangled cock did call

To scattering grain that Martha flung.

And many a time a mop was wrung

By Susan ere the floor was clean.

The harness room, that busy scene,

Clinked and chinked from ostlers brightening

Rings and bits with dips of whitening,

Rubbing fox-flecks out of stirrups,

Dumbing buckles of their chirrups

By the touch of oily feathers.

Some, with stag's bones rubbed at leathers,

Brushed at saddle-flaps or hove

Saddle linings to the stove.

Blue smoke from strong tobacco drifted

Out of the yard, the passers snifft it,

Mixed with the strong ammonia flavour

Of horses’ stables and the savour

Of saddle-paste and polish spirit

Which put the gleam on flap and tirrit.

The grooms in shirts with rolled-up sleeves,

Belted by girths of coloured weaves,

Groomed the clipped hunters in their stalls.

One said, “My dad cured saddle galls,

He called it Doctor Barton's cure;

Hog's lard and borax, laid on pure.”

And others said, “Ge’ back, my son,”

“Stand over, girl; now, girl, ha’ done.”

“Now, boy, no snapping; gently. Crikes,

He gives a rare pinch when he likes.”

“Drawn blood? I thought he looked a biter.”

“I give‘ em all sweet spit of nitre

For that, myself: that sometimes cures.”

“Now, Beauty, mind them feet of yours.”

They groomed, and sissed with hissing notes

To keep the dust out of their throats.

There came again and yet again

The feed-box lid, the swish of grain,

Or Joe's boots stamping in the loft,

The hay-fork's stab and then the soft

Hay's scratching slither down the shoot.

Then with a thud some horse's foot

Stamped, and the gulping munch again

Resumed its lippings at the grain.

The road outside the inn was quiet

Save for the poor, mad, restless pyat

Hopping his hanging wicker-cage.

No calmative of sleep or sage

Will cure the fever to be free.

He shook the wicker ceaselessly

Now up, now down, but never out

On wind-waves, being blown about,

Looking for dead things good to eat.

His cage was strewn with scattered wheat.

At ten o'clock, the Doctor's lad

Brought up his master's hunting pad

And put him in a stall, and leaned

Against the stall, and sissed, and cleaned

The port and cannons of his curb.

He chewed a sprig of smelling herb.

He sometimes stopped, and spat, and chid

The silly things his master did.