38 



The Chase 



in the gorse, waiting with bared teeth for the 

 hounds and the last fight. But the hounds rush 

 by, their cry now is not for him, for the wood is 

 rank with the scent of fox, and the hounds have got 

 on the track of another cub which they eventually 

 kill. 



The day draws to its close, the fox lies still and 

 takes his rest after the heat and burden of the chase. 



A robin sang from a pufTt ted breast, 

 The fox lay quiet and took his rest. . . . 



Reynard the Fox is a poem which is alert, vivid, 

 full of apt phrasing and descriptions of natural 

 beauty. A poem to make the blood course faster 

 in the veins of every true sportsman. The love of 

 the Chase, this zest of Hunting is in our blood, it is 

 part of the English tradition and heritage. 



Wc find also in the poetry of John Clare and in 

 one or two of Wordsworth's finest poems, the same 

 quality of exact and loving depiction of English 

 Landscape which Mr. Masefield has given us in 

 Reynard the Fox. The charm of the English 

 countryside, the vision of the land we love, with 

 its aroma that haunts the mind ; its life of trees and 

 flowers ; its glad cries of birds, and its intimate life 

 of animals and insects, was rendered with passionate 

 devotion by the peasant poet, John Clare. In 

 prose Richard JefFeries and George Borrow, in 

 verse Clare and Wordsworth are our greatest 

 interpreters of English Landscape. 



Samuel y . Looker. 



