After mass a morsel he took with his men;
Merry was the morning, his mount he bade bring;
And the athels all, that the hunt should follow,
For the riding were ready, array’d at the gates.
Fair gleams it afield, for the frost clings,
Fiery red on the wrack rises the sun
And edges with crimson the clouds of the welkin.
The hunters cast off by a hólt sìde,
Rocks in the forest rung with their horns,
Hounds fell on the scent where the fox them bode,
Cross’d and recross’d, by craft of their wiles.
A kennet gave cry and the huntsman call’d,
And hounds came panting, all in a pack,
Ran forth in a rabble, right on the trail—
And he frisk’d off before them; they found him anon,
And, when they had sighted, pursued him full speed
And bewrayèd poor Reynard with a wroth clamour.
Then dodg’d he and doubled through dingle and spinney,
Héld back, and hearken’d by hedges full oft;
At last by a little ditch he leapt o’er a quickset,
And stole out full stilly, astray by a copse—
He ween’d to have outwitted the hounds by his wiles,
But was went, ere he wist, to óne of the stations
Where three men athwart him threaten’d him at once,
the gray!
Again he swervèd forth,
And started quick astray,
And with all the woe on earth
To the wood he went away.