Hunting The Hare

Hark for'ard, hark for'ard, hark for'ard, to hills where October Lingers awhile in his vesture resplendent yet sober, Where, salt with the breath of the ocean, the Autumn wind passes With a sigh o'er the heather's lost purple, the yellowing grasses. Hark for'ard, hark for'ard, hark for'ard! in morning's young glory The hound and the horn lead us out through the meadowlands hoary, By the grey little farms with their scanty hill-pastures about them, And the thorns crouching low to the ground from the storm-winds that flout them. Hark for'ard, hark for'ard, hark for'ard! rejoicing we follow, By the swift little brook that runs pattering deep in the hollow, By the pool with grey reeds at its rim where the wild duck rise whirring, And the long moorland grass in the breeze's breath sighing and stirring. Hark for'ard, hark for'ard, hark for'ard! till daylight be dying And leaving the hill to the stars and the peewit's lone crying And the huntsman who rides down the wind, with a ghostly hallooing His deer o'er the moorland by midnight forever pursuing. And oft when the wind murmurs low, round the gable-end roaming, Its song of old voices we knew, in the wild winter gloaming, When white on the moorland lie drifted the snows of December In dreams to brave days that are ended, hark back and remember!