Our Hunting Fathers

They are our past and our future; the poles between
which our desire unceasingly is discharged.
A desire in which love and hatred so perfectly oppose
themselves, that we cannot voluntarily move,
but await the extraordinary compulsion of the deluge
and the earthquake.
Their finish has inspired the limits of all arts and
ascetic movements.
Their affections and indifferences have been a guide
to all reformers and tyrants.
Their appearances in our dreams of machinery have
brought a vision of nude and fabulous epochs.
O  pride so hostile to our charity.
But what their pride has retained, we may by charity
more generously recover.

I command that all the rats that are hereabout
That none dwell in this place, within or without;
Through the virtue of Jesus that Mary bore,
Whom all creatures must ever adore;
And through the virtue of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John,
All four Archangels, that are as one;
Through the virtue of Saint Gertrude, that maid clean,
God grant in grace
That no rats dwell in the place
That these names were uttered in;
And through the virtue of Saint Kasi,
That holy man who prayed to God Almighty
Of the scathes they did
His meadows amid
By day and night.
God bid them flee and go out of every man's sight.
Dominus, Deus, Sabbaoth, Emmanuel, great name of
God,
Deliver this place from rats and from all other shame.
God save this place from all other wicked wights,
Both by days and by nights,
Et in nomini Patris et Filii et Sancti Spiriti, Amen.

Ay me, alas, heigh ho, heigh ho!
Thus doth Messalina go
Up and down the house a-crying,
For her monkey lies a-dying.
Death, thou art too cruel
To bereave her of her jewel;
Or to make a seizure
Of her only treasure.
If her monkey die
She will sit and cry:
Fie, fie, fie, fie, fie!

 Whurret!        Duty              Beauty
 Quando         Timble
 Travel            Trover
 Jew               Damsel
 Hey dogs hey! Ware haunt hay!

 Sith sickles and the shearing scythe
 Hath shorn the fields of late,
 Now shall our hawks and we be blithe,
 Dame Partridge ware your pate!
 Our murdering kites
 In all their flights
 Will seld or never miss
 To truss you ever and make your bale our bliss.

 Whurret!       Wanton         Sugar         Mistress
 Semster        Faver         Minx
 Callis            Dover         Sant
 Dancer          Jerker        Quoy

 Whurret!        Tricker          Crafty         Minion
 Dido              Civil           Lemmon
 Cherry           Carver        Courtier
 Stately          Ruler          German let fly!

 O well flown, eager kite, mark!
 We falconers thus make sullen kites
 Yield pleasure fit for kings,
 And sport with them in those delights,
 And oft in other things.

Our hunting fathers told the story
Of the sadness of the creatures,
Pitied the limits and the lack
Set in their finished features;
Saw in the lion's intolerant look,
Behind the quarry's dying glare,
Love raging for the personal glory
That reason's gift would add
The liberal appetite and power,
The rightness of a god.

Who nurtured in that fine tradition
Predicted the result,
Guessed love by nature suited to
The intricate ways of guilt;
That human company could so
His southern gestures modify
And make it his mature ambition
To think no thought but ours,
To hunger, work illegally,
And be anonymous?