AUTUMNAL SPORTS
Oh, much I love the spring-time, when the nesting birds are here,
And much I love the summer days also, when brooks are bright and clear.
Greatly, too, I prize the winter season, with its fireside chat and cheer,
But sweeter, fairer far to me, is Autumn’s bracing, splendid weather!
When the spicy, frost-bit, gold-hued forest leaves are falling,
When the fearless, dusky, brownish bob-white quail is calling,
Calling boldly from the stubble-field to his timid scattered coveys in the thickets near,
So right off I get my “shooting-iron,” and my doggie I untether!
And away, away we blithely stroll together,
O’er the russet lawns, and on adown unto the fenlands, to our hearts so dear.
And when arrived there soon,
Some rapid, random shots I take
At the frightened ducks that squawking leave the lake,
And my doggie on the run,
And the direful booming of my gun,
Sets my heart a-beating, beating,
For old Death himself might think that I were cheating, cheating
Him out of half the “sanguine kills” that he himself would joy to make.