POEMS OLD AND NEW

So a fateful hope lit up his eye.

And he opened his nostrils wide again.
And he tossed his branching antlers high

As he headed the hunt down the Charlock glen,
As he raced down the echoing glen
For five miles more, the stag, the stag.
For twenty miles, and five and five,
Not to be caught now, dead or alive,
The stag, the runnable stag.

Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, 10

Three hundred horses as gallant and free,
Beheld him escape on the evening tide,
Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea,
Till he sank in the depths of the sea—
The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag
That slept at last in a jewelled bed
Under the sheltering ocean spread,
The stag, the runnable stag.

JOHN DAVIDSON

HAWKE
IN seventeen hundred and fifty-nine,
When Hawke came swooping from the West, 20
The French King's Admiral with twenty of the line,
Was sailing forth, to sack us, out of Brest.
The ports of France were crowded, the quays of
France a-hum
With thirty thousand soldiers marching to the drum,
For bragging time was over and fighting time was
come
When Hawke came swooping from the West.
5Twas long past noon of a wild November Day
When Hawke came swooping from the West;
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