A Hunting Morning
- PUT the saddle on the mare,
- For the wet winds blow;
- There's winter in the air,
- And autumn all below.
- For the red leaves are flying
- And the red bracken dying,
- And the red fox lying
- Where the oziers grow.
- Put the bridle on the mare,
- For my blood runs chill;
- And my heart, it is there,
- On the heather-tufted hill,
- With the gray skies o'er us,
- And the long-drawn chorus
- Of running pack before us
- From the find to the kill.
- Then lead round the mare,
- For it's time that we began,
- And away with thought and care,
- Save to live and be a man,
- While the keen air is blowing,
- And the huntsman halloing,
- And the black mare going
- As the black mare can.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
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.