A-HUNTING LET THEM GO

Posted by Admin on 27 July 2006, 12:00 am

Clip-clop. Clip-clop.
What a blithe cavalcade
as the local hunt goes by,
now watched by a hostile saboteur
with a jealous jaundiced eye.

In youth I too condemned it,
agreed with Oscar Wilde,
considered it reversion and
a thing to be reviled.

Until, this is, within me stirred
a grandsire’s dormant gene
that changed my ‘anti’ attitude
anent the hunting scene:

made me appreciate at last
the splendid pageantry,
preserved intact from times long past –
a link in history:

admire the muscled splendour of
a steed launched at a gate,
both air-borne horse and rider
together tempting Fate:

admire, too, the young and old
for sheer equestrian skills,
obtaining pleasure from the chase,
not from the gory ‘kills’.

So let them hear the huntsman’s horn,
pursue the Master’s wake,
for should they come a cropper,
their necks are theirs to break!

Although aware that pest control
is not their raison d’être,
they’ll hear no protest from my lips –
for Reynard no regret.

If for ill-treatment of the fox
some should a grievance nurse,
we’ve greater evils in our land
that should be dealt with first.

T. C. Hudson

Church

Village