Walter de la Mare, 'Dry August Burned'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Cross-post from war_poetry:

Dry August Burned

Dry August burned. A harvest hare
Limp on the kitchen table lay,
Its fur blood-blubbered, eye astare,
While a small child that stood near by
Wept out her heart to see it there.

Sharp came the clop of hoofs, the clang
Of dangling chain, voices that rang
Out like a leveret she ran,
To feast her glistening bird-clear eyes
On a team of field artillery
Gay, to manaeuvres, thudding by.
Spur and gun and limber plate
Flashed in the sun. Alert, elate,
Noble horses, foam at lip,
Harness, stirrup, holster, whip,
She watched the sun-tanned soldiery,
Till dust-white hedge had hidden away —
Its din into a rumour thinned —
The laughing, jolting, wild array:
And then — the wonder and tumult gone —
Stood nibbling a green leaf, alone,
Her dark eyes, dreaming. . . . She turned, and ran,
Elf-like, into the house again.
The hare had vanished. . . . ' Mother, ' she said,
Her tear-stained cheek now flushed with red,
' Please, may I go and see it skinned? '

By Walter de la Mare

Comments

[med_cat]

Children are such paradoxes, sometimes...

[duathir.livejournal.com]

True, and they are quick to adapt. It is a paradox also, that the hare is both a once-living being to be mourned, and meat for the table.

[med_cat]

Quite as you say...they are so cute, on one hand, and on the other hand, they make good eating...

A friend of mine in college mentioned once that her grandpa, when he moved to the U.S. and saw all the rabbits running around in the suburbs, remarked, "Oh! There goes a live pot roast, running around!"

;)

[duathir.livejournal.com]

If only people took that view of grey squirrels.

[med_cat]

;))

Her grandpa didn't hunt or anything, but rabbit was more commonly eaten in the (former) Soviet Union than it is in this area of the US