Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
III. The SeasonsThe Old Squire
Wilfred Scawen Blunt (18401922)I
Better than that of the fox;
I like the joyous morning air,
And the crowing of the cocks.
The ducks asleep by the lake,
The quiet hour which Nature yields
Before mankind is awake.
Of the unsuspicious morn;
I like the flap of the wood-pigeon’s wings
As she rises from the corn.
From the turnips as I pass by,
And the partridge hiding her head in a bush,
For her young ones cannot fly.
When all the world is in bed,
To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide,
And where the sun grows red.
In silence after me;
There ’s Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot,
Old Slut and Margery,—
The names my childhood knew;
The horn, with which I rouse their cheer,
Is the horn my father blew.
Better than that of the fox;
The new world still is all less fair
Than the old world it mocks.
Than these dear manors give;
I take my pleasures without change,
And as I lived I live.
My choice it is, and pride,
On my own lands to find my sport,
In my own fields to ride.
The field where she was bred,
Than I the habit of these groves,
My own inherited.
The meuse where she sits low;
The road she chose to-day was run
A hundred years ago.
The hedgerows one and all,
These are the kingdoms of my chase,
And bounded by my wall;
Though one should search it round,
Than thus to live one’s own sole king,
Upon one’s own sole ground.
It brings me, day by day,
The memory of old days as fair,
With dead men passed away.
And pass the churchyard gate,
Where all are laid as I must lie,
I stop and raise my hat.
New sports I hold in scorn.
I like to be as my fathers were,
In the days ere I was born.