Porkopolis

The Farmer’s Boy, Autum

• No more the fields with scattered grain supply
• The restless wandering tenants of the STY;
• From oak to oak they rim with eager haste,
• And wrangling share the first delicious taste
• Of fallen ACORNS; yet but thinly found
• Till the strong gale has shook them to the ground.
• It comes; and the roaring woods obedient wave:
• Their home well–pleased the joint adventurers leave:
• The trudging sow leads forth her numerous young,
• Playful, and white, and clean, the briars among,
• Till briars and thorns increasing, fence them round,
• Where last year’s mouldering leaves bestrew the ground,
• And o’er their heads, loud lash’d by furious squalls,
• Bright from theft cups the rattling treasure falls;
• Hot, thirsty food; whence doubly sweet and cool
• The welcome margin of some rush–grown pool.
• The Wild Duck’s lovely haunt, whose jealous eye
• Guards every point; who sits, prepar’d to fly
• On the calm bosom of her little lake,
• Too closely screen’d for ruffian winds to shake;
• And as the bold intruders press around
• At once she starts, and rises with a bound:
• With bristles rais’d the sudden noise they hear,
• And ludicrously wild, and wing’d with fear,
• The herd decamp with more than swinish speed,
• And snorting dash through sedge, and rush, and reed:
• Through tangling thickets on and on they go
• Then stop and listen for their fancied foe;
• The hindmost still the growing panic spreads,
• Repeated flight the first alarm succeeds
• Till Folly’s wages, wounds and thorns, they reap:
• Yet glorying in their fortunate escape
• Their groundless terrors by degrees soon cease,
• And Night’s dark reign restores their wonted peace.
• For now the gale subsides, and from each bough
• The roosting Pheasant’s short but frequent crow
• Invites to rest, and huddling side by side,
• The herd in closest ambush seek to hide;
• Seek some warm slope with shagged moss o’erspread
• Dry’d leaves their copious covering and their bed,
• In vain may Giles, through gathering glooms that fall
• And solemn silence, urge his piercing call:
• Whole days and nights they tarry midst their store
• Nor quit the woods, till oaks can yield no more.