A Hunting Morning


Knighted June 26, 1902, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is most renown as the literary genius who created Sherlock Holmes. Or as Holmes would have us believe Doyle was the literary agent who helped publish his mystery cases, depending on your dedication to The Game. Doyle however felt that Holmes took away too much of his time and that the public did not pay enough attention to his other literary works.

A complex and brilliant man his later years were comprised of his unwavering belief in Spiritualism as a source of strength. He wrote A History of Spiritualism in 1926 despite public ridicule. He did contribute verse to several English and American magazines in the last part of the 1800's and A Hunting Morning is from one of these collections, Songs of Action. Some scholars of poetry speculate that by the haunting tone of the line Save to live and be a man that allegory may have been intended. Oziers (or Osiers) in the first stanza are Red Oziers a type of willow tree that are colorful in the late fall.

Sources:

Public domain text taken from The Poets’ Corner:
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/2001/doyle0101.html

CST Approved.

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