Anonymous: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

As the cry went up the wild creatures quaked.
The deer in the dale, quivering with dread,
hurtled to high ground, but were headed off
by the ring of beaters who bawled and roared.
The stags of the herd with their high-branched heads
and the broad-horned bucks were allowed to pass by,
for the lord of the land had laid down a law
that man should not maim the male in close season.
But the hinds were halted with hollers and whoops
and the din drove the does to sprint for the dells.
Then the eye can see that the air is all arrows:
all across the forest they flashed and flickered,
biting through hides with their broad heads.
What! They bleat as they bleed and they die on the banks,
and always the hounds are hard on their heels,
and the hunters on horseback come hammering behind
with stone-splitting cries, as if cliffs had collapsed.
And those animals which escaped the aim of the archers
were steered from the slopes down to rivers and streams
and set upon and seized at the stations below.
So perfect and practised were the men at their posts
and so great were the greyhounds which grappled with the deer
that prey was pounced on and dispatched with speed
                            and force.
               The lord's heart leaps with life.
               Now on, now off his horse
               all day he hacks and drives.
               And dusk comes in due course.


An excerpt from the 2007 translation by Simon Armitage, who aims to give the feel of the original's alliteration (at the cost of the occasional gristly bit of translationese). Notable is the utterly pre-modern lack of any empathy, even ironic, with the hunted animals: that simply wasn't part of the furniture in 1400 AD.