To the Farmers

When we bid a farewell to the season

And turn out our hunters to grass,

‘Twould be surely the blackest of treason

To go without filling a glass

To the men who have furthered our pastime

By lending their fields for the fun!

Here’s ‘The Farmers’- Once, twice and a last time –

And ‘Grandfather, father, and son!’

 

Looking back on the season that’s ended,

We blush for our track in the seeds,

For the fences we left to be mended,

And the damage we did in the Swedes;

And so, when we know there’s no brooding

And the mending is cheerfully done,

Let us drink to the farmers; including

The grandfather, father, and son!

 

From that rattling good day in November

Up to yesterday’s wonderful burst

There is scarcely a run we remember

When a farmer was other than first.

It’s because when the pace becomes clinking

They can ride us with second to none

That we drink – with our hearts in the drinking –

‘The Farmers! Sire, grandsire, and son!’

 

Will Ogilvie

‘Yonder He Goes!’

Always our fathers were hunters, lords of the pitiless spear,

Chasing in English woodlands the wild white ox and the deer,

Feeling the edge of their knife-blades, trying the pull of their bows,

At a sudden foot in the forest thrilling to ‘Yonder he goes!’

 

Not for the lust of killing, not for the places of pride,

Not for the hate of the hunted we English saddle and ride,

But because in the gift of our fathers the blood in our veins that flows

Must answer for ever and ever the challenge of ‘Yonder he goes!’

 

Will Ogilvie

Stag-Hunting on Exmoor

Stag is a Peer,

Hind is his Lady;

Haunters of the Deer

Bosky and Shady –

Somerset combe, dell of fair Devon – and cool

(Friend to the hunted) swift water and shadowy pool.

 

Rancher

 

A Day in the Vale, G.D Armour, 1926

And now Farewell. Hard ride we day by day

Yet not outstrip the ever-westering Sun.

Is it Farewell? Then fare ye well – as they

Who homed before us, all their faring done.

 

But, after that Farewell which all must bid

To Man and Horse and Hound – and so depart –

After Farewell, though in the shadows hid,

Can we be sure they are such leagues apart?

 

Yes! When the mettled pride of noon is spent,

The last long-quavering note is blown,

Turn we to face the gloaming – well content

To dread no more we must hack Home, alone.

 

Rancher

Rancher

And now – what a bustle, what hard-riding hustle!

When thrusters the strong way, the cunning their long way

(The gossips the wrong way) have galloped and gone,

Perchance, the day ended, the lilt of a song may

Coax Memory’s pleasure to tread an old measure –

So fill up a glass, and again ‘Forrard-on!’

 

Rancher

Hunting Grace

Praise to the Lord for a fine hunting morn,

Praise for our food and the sound of the horn,

Praise for our wine, the fences, the ditches.

Ditches which crumble, we fumble, we tumble;

Praise to the Lord for a day with the Quorn.

 

Courtesy of the Reverend Rex Hancock

Rancher

How happy Fate’s darlings (more favoured than few)

Who hunt in the Shires, and aspire to a view

Of the fastest of things with the galloping Packs –

How happy (though fewer than favoured) the Cracks!

 

Rancher

Horse in Landscape

Self Portrait

Painting – Self Portrait