[Illustration: Reynard the fox] The fox was strong, he was full of running, He could run for an hour and then be cunning, But the cry behind him made him chill, They were nearer now and they meant to kill. They meant to run him until his blood Clogged on his heart as his brush with mud, Till his back bent up and his tongue hung flagging, And his belly and brush were filthed from dragging. Till he crouched stone still, dead-beat and dirty, With nothing but teeth against the thirty. And all the way to that blinding end He would meet with men and have none his friend. Men to holloa and men to run him, With stones to stagger and yells to stun him, Men to head him, with whips to beat him, Teeth to mangle and mouths to eat him. And all the way, that wild high crying, To cold his blood with the thought of dying, The horn and the cheer, and the drum-like thunder, Of the horse hooves stamping the meadows under. He upped his brush and went with a will For the Sarsen Stones on Wan Dyke Hill. [Illustration: Reynard the fox] As he ran the meadow by Tineton Church, A christening party left the porch, They stood stock still as he pounded by, They wished him luck but they thought he'd die. The toothless babe in his long white coat Looked delicate meat, the fox took note; But the sight of them grinning there, pointing finger, Made him put on steam till he went a stinger. Past Tineton Church over Tineton Waste, With the lolloping ease of a fox's haste, The fur on his chest blown dry with the air, His brush still up and his cheek-teeth bare. Over the Waste where the ganders grazed, The long swift lilt of his loping lazed, His ears cocked up as his blood ran higher, He saw his point, and his eyes took fire. The Wan Dyke Hill with its fir tree barren, Its dark of gorse and its rabbit warren. The Dyke on its heave like a tightened girth, And holes in the Dyke where a fox might earth. He had rabbitted there long months before, The earths were deep and his need was sore, The way was new, but he took a vearing, And rushed like a blown ship billow-sharing.