The Idler's Calendar, January: Cover Shooting

THE week at Whinwood next to Christmas week.
Six guns, no more, but all good men and true,
Of the clean-visaged sort, with ruddy cheek
Which knows not care. Light-hearted Montagu
At the cover's end, as down the wind they flew,
Has stopped his score of pheasants, every beak,
Without more thought of Juliet than of you ;
And still I hear his loud-mouthed Purdeys speak.
Tybalt and Paris, with a bet on hand,
Have fired at the same woodcock. " Truce," say I,
" To civil jars." For look, as by command,
Bunch following bunch, a hundred pheasants fly.
Now battle, murder, death on every side !
Right, left, left, right, we pile up agony,
Till night stops all. Then home in chastened pride,
With aching heads, our slaughter satisfied.