Classic Poem

I LIKE the hunting of the hare
— Better than that of the fox;
I like the joyous morning air,
— And the crowing of the cocks.

I like the calm of the early fields,
— The ducks asleep by the lake,
The quiet hour which nature yields
— Before mankind is awake.

I like the pheasants and feeding things
— Of the unsuspicious morn;
I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings
— As she rises from the corn.

I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush
— From the turnips as I pass by,
And the partridge hiding her head in a bush,
— For her young ones cannot fly.

I like these things, and I like to ride,
— When all the world is in bed,
To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide,
— And where the sun grows red.

The beagles at my horse-heels trot
— In silence after me;
There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot,
— Old Slut and Margery, —

A score of names well used, and dear,
— The names my childhood knew;
The horn with which I rouse their cheer,
— Is the horn my father blew.

I like the hunting of the hare
— Better than that of the fox;
The new world still is all less fair
— Than the old world it mocks.

I covet not a wider range
— Than these dear manors give;
I take my pleasures without change,
— And as I lived I live.

I leave my neighbors to their thought;
— My choice it is, and pride,
On my own lands to find my sport,
— In my own fields to ride.

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 passed away.

To these, as 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 I hold in scorn.
I like to be as my fathers were,
— In the days ere I was born.