34 The Chase 



rank ; the old world games ; the harvest-home 

 dinner ; are all stray watts of the Elizabethan age. 

 No more than distant mutterings of the storms 

 which have since then broken over England have 

 reached the lonely moors of Exe and Barle, and 

 merry England, like the setting sun, lovingly lingers 

 on the hillsides of the west. 



The Rt. Hon. D. H. Madden. 



Reynard the Fox ^:^ ^:^ ^c^ 



(Mr. Masefield on Hunting) 



REYNARD the Fox, or the Ghost Heath 

 Run," is Mr. Masefield's finest narrative poem. 

 Here he rises in great measure above the faults 

 which so often disfigure his poetry. Subject and 

 form become perfectly fused, and the zest of the 

 narrative is extraordinary. The poem has been 

 read to one of the leading Huntsmen in the Mid- 

 lands, not a lover of literature by any means, who 

 expressed himself concerning it in terms of un- 

 measured praise. 



The poem is divided into two parts. In the 

 first part the meet is described, the hounds and 

 the huntsmen, and in the second part we are shown 

 the hunt from the fox's point of view. The poem 

 shows throughout evidence of the most careful and 

 accurate observation. The description and incidents 

 are rendered with a pictorial quality which is as 

 rare as it is welcome in modern poetry. In 

 Reynard the Fox we are reminded of the manner 

 of Chaucer. Here in abundance are many of the 

 loving, lingering descriptive touches, which build 

 up such a convincing picture in the work of the 

 father of English poetry. 



The fidelity of Mr. Masefield's work may be 



