I know my quarries every one,
  The meuse where she sits low;
The road she chose to-day was run
  A hundred years ago.

The lags, the gills, the forest ways,
  The hedgerows one and all,
These are the kingdoms of my chase,
  And bounded by my wall;

Nor has the world a better thing,
  Though one should search it round,
Than thus to live one’s own sole king,
  Upon one’s own sole ground.

I like the hunting of the hare;
  It brings me, day by day,
The memory of old days as fair,
  With dead men past away.

To these, as homeward still I ply
  And pass the churchyard gate
Where all are laid as I must lie,
  I stop and raise my hat.

I like the humting of the hare;
  New sports I hold in scorn.
I like to be as my fathers were,
  In the days e’er I was born.