Edmund Blunden: Winter: East Anglia

In a frosty sunset
    So fiery red with cold
The footballers' onset
    Rings out glad and bold;
Then boys from daily tether
    With famous dogs at heel
In starlight meet together
    And to farther hedges steal;
Where the rats are pattering
    In and out the stacks
Owls with hatred chattering
    Swoop at the terriers' backs.
And, frost forgot, the chase grows hot
    Till a rat's a foolish prize,
But the cornered weasel stands his ground,
Shrieks at the dogs and boys set round,
Shrieks as he knows they stand all round,
    And hard as winter dies.


Blunden (1896-1974) is too often classified as a war poet or Georgian poet. He was far more than the former and didn't deserve the "Georgian" label, if it's understood to mean simplistic reactionary pastoralism. This early poem, despite its occasionally worn-out diction ("glad and bold", "a foolish prize") shows Blunden's toughness.