1 86 The Poets' Beasts. 



has made it, it is the veriest elf of frolic. Faber talks of the 

 "almost silent gambols of the hares in the tall grass" — 

 Burns has them on a happy summer's day " hirplin down 

 the furze," and again "jinking hares in amorous whids " — 

 and Wordsworth sees her "running races in her mirth." 

 Cowper has pet ones — 



" I kept him for his humour's sake, 

 For he would oft beguile 

 My heart of thoughts that made it ache 

 And force me to a smile " — 



that are " still wild Jack-hares," and — 



" A turkey carpet v/as his lawn, 

 Whereon he loved to bound, 

 To skip and gambol like a fawn, 

 And swing his rump around." 



Nor is the "panting timorous" hare always "fearful." 

 Like all wild things in England, where dogs, and guns, and 

 traps cover the land with such a labyrinth of danger, they 

 suspect man and all his works. But a very little will suffice 

 to gain the confidence of hares, and make them "lose 

 much of the vigilant instinctive dread," as Cowper, being 

 himself inoffensive, found — "the timorous hare scarce shuns 

 me." Sometimes, indeed, they require only too little en- 

 couragement for boldness, and having been invited into the 

 paddock with cabbage-leaves and parsley, invite themselves 

 later on into the kitchen garden. In winter too, when — 



" The foodless wilds 

 Pour forth their brown inhabitants, the hare, 

 Tliough timorous of heart and hard beset 

 By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, 

 And more unpitying men, tlie garden seeks, 

 Urged on by fearless want." — Thomson. 



In "Reynard the Fox," the hare, Kayward, though a 

 simpleton, is certainly not a coward. 



