17 SEPTEMBER 1937, Page 21

WILD HARE

I HATE to watch them reaping the Five Acre,

The field at the hill's foot, steeply sloping.

One sees the pattern too clearly, with a God's-eye view : Sees how Time, with soothing quotidian clatter Cuts his broad swathes, works inward from the edge : Sees how the earliest rings (youth's endless summers) Are leisurely and long : how they grow shorter As the sun climbs. At noon (One's children grown and flown) There comes a lull, a respite ; Time's trundling Pauses ; he eats his dinner under the hedge.

But soon, restored and eager To race the sun, eye cocked to sky, He's off again : and now the uncut square Shrinks quickly to a patch ; and Soul, wild hare, Cowers in the heart of the corn, its shelter dwindling : And I, watching, sicken and turn away.

JAN STRUTHER;