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Mammoths

Patrick Reginald Chalmers

1872 to 1942

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Up and down the high woods, up and down the low, 
Must 'a' gone a-hunting morts of years ago;e
When the beaver whistled, when the aurochs ran, 
Must 'a' been a-hunting when the world began. 

For I half remember (tusk on kingly tusk) 
How I've seen the mammoths moving through the dusk: 
Mammoths all a-marching, terrible to see, 
Through an awful oak-wood glooming ghoulishly. 

Shadows huge and hairy, as the day was done, 
Somehow I remember, walking one by one, 
Bulls grotesque and solemn, pulling boughs in halves; 
Running 'neath their mothers, little idiot calves. 

Lumping through the oak-swamp, vast and dim and grey, 
I have watched the mammoths pass at dusk of day; 
Through the quaking hollow, through the tree-trunks stark, 
Gleams of mighty ivory breaking up the dark. 

That's the way I dream it, that's the way I know, 
Must 'a' gone a-hunting, years and years ago: 
For I've seen the mammoths — 'tisn't you that could — 
Moving like cathedrals through a dreadful wood.