Reynard the Fox

The meet was at "The Cock and Pye By Charles and Martha Enderby," The grey, three-hundred-year-old inn Long since the haunt of Benjamin The highwayman, who rode the bay. The tavern fronts the coaching way, The mail changed horses there of old. It has a strip of grassy mould In front of it, a broad green strip. A trough, where horses' muzzles dip, Stands opposite the tavern front, And there that morning came the hunt, To fill that quiet width of road As full of men as Framilode Is full of sea when tide is in. The stables were alive with din From dawn until the time of meeting. A pad-groom gave a cloth a beating, Knocking the dust out with a stake. Two men cleaned stalls with fork and rake, And one went whistling to the pump, The handle whined, ker-lump, ker-lump, The water splashed into the pail, And, as he went, it left a trail, Lipped over on the yard's bricked paving. Two grooms (sent on before) were shaving There in the yard, at glasses propped On jutting bricks; they scraped and stropped, And felt their chins and leaned and peered, A woodland day was what they feared (As second horsemen), shaving there.