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SPURS, AND A HUNTING-CAP, BUCKISHLY COCKED ON ONE SIDE, AND TUCKING UP

Percy Bysshe Shelley

HER HAIR, SHE LEAPS NIMBLY ON HIS BACK]:

Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!

Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,

These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,

These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.

Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs

Now let your noses be as keen as beagles’, _120

Your steps as swift as greyhounds’, and your cries

More dulcet and symphonious than the bells

Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;

Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.

Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?) _125

But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho!

Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,

Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!

 

FULL CHORUS OF IONA AND THE SWINE:

Tallyho! tallyho!

Through rain, hail, and snow, _130

Through brake, gorse, and briar,

Through fen, flood, and mire,

We go! we go!

 

Tallyho! tallyho!

Through pond, ditch, and slough, _135

Wind them, and find them,

Like the Devil behind them,

Tallyho! tallyho!

 

[EXEUNT, IN FULL CRY;

IONA DRIVING ON THE SWINE, WITH THE EMPTY GEEEN BAG.]