“From cliff to cliff the falling waters roar, / Then die in murmurs, and are heard no more.”

For Poetry Monday, another modern sonnet:


Partridges, John Masefield

Here they lie mottled to the ground unseen,
This covey linked together from the nest.
The nosing pointers put them from their rest,
The wings whirr, the guns flash and all has been.

The lucky crumple to the clod, shot clean,
The wounded drop and hurry and lie close;
The sportsmen praise the pointer and his nose,
Until he scents the hiders and is keen.

Tumbled in bag with rabbits, pigeons, hares,
The crumpled corpses have forgotten all
The covey’s joys of strong or gliding flight.

But when the planet lamps the coming night,
The few survivors seek those friends of theirs;
The twilight hears and darkness hears them call.


Masefield wrote this in 1936, when he was already Poet Laureate.

---L.

Subject quote from Laura, an Imitation of Petrarch, William Jones.