Pheasant Shoot At West Harling Poem by Roy Ballard

Upon the painted meadows contented cattle graze.
The distant, towered churches brood on half a million days.
Black Carr is dank and sedgy but Micklemoor is high
so here the ancients settled and here their bones still lie.
The beaters whack the branches; the sportive springer runs;
they drive the tribe of pheasants to the boding line of guns.

Wrapped in the reeds by Roman Wood, the stag stands in alarm;
his ears pick up a warning, his nose the scent of harm.
The duck seeks hidden ditches, the fox makes for his lair;
the pigeon flies across the sun and dodges like a hare.
The pheasant sounds his brassy bell, he whirrs his wings to fly
and every ear seeks out his voice and every gun the sky.

Across the heath and forest, six thousand years ago,
their fathers' dress was formal when hunting they would go.
In buckskin boots and sable, with feathers in their caps,
in moleskins and morocco they were well apparelled chaps.
Now pheasants do require it, when coming to be killed,
that turn-out should be proper, be it corded, tweed or twilled;
the greasy mark of tractors, a trace of ferret stool
and hints of dogs and ditches bother nobody at all.