With this issue of FHL WEEK appearing the morning after the annual Hunters’ Moon,* we consider this poem especially appropriate!
Illustration by Gilbert Holliday
By Edric G. Roberts
The horizon, sapphire and amethyst,
Pales in the East and soon,
Like a copper shield through the evening mist,
Rises the Hunters’ Moon.
On the turnpike road every hoof-beat sounds
Clear in the frosty air,
As the Whip jogs home with the straggler-hounds
Jostling his weary mare.
They were bustling cubs in the woods until
Late in the afternoon,
When the pack divided and ran to kill,
Under the rising moon.
Now the shadows deepen as daylight dies;
Brighter the moonbeams grow;
And the branches gleam where the hoar-frost lies
Whiter than winter snow.
From the distant woods, looming soft and dark,
There where the mists are strewn,
Comes the high-pitched note of a fox’s bark
Baying the Hunters’ Moon.
Posted October 25, 2015
* The hunters’ moon is the next full moon (usually in October or November) to follow the full moon known as the harvest moon, which occurs nearest to the fall equinox (September 22 or 23).