[Illustration: For with feet all bloody and flanks all foam, The hounds and the hunt were limping home.] The stars grew bright in the winter sky, The wind came keen with a tang of frost, The brook was troubled for new things lost, The copse was happy for old things found, The fox came home and he went to ground. And the hunt came home and the hounds were fed, They climbed to their bench and went to bed, The horses in stable loved their straw. "Good-night, my beauties," said Robin Dawe. Then the moon came quiet and flooded full Light and beauty on clouds like wool, On a feasted fox at rest from hunting, In the beech wood grey where the brocks were grunting. [Illustration: Eighth colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] The beech wood grey rose dim in the night With moonlight fallen in pools of light, The long dead leaves on the ground were rimed. A clock struck twelve and the church-bells chimed. Printed in the United States of America. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Words surrounded by _ are italicized. All author's punctuations retained. All apparent printer's errors and variable spellings retained, including variable usage of hyphen (e.g. "goodwill" and "good-will") and any other variable spellings. Descriptions added to captionless illustrations.