While the rain fell on the November woodland shoulder of Exmoor
While the traffic-jam along the road honked and shouted
Because the farmers were parking wherever they could
And scrambling to the bank-top to stare through the tree-fringe
Which was leafless,
The stag ran through the private forest.
While the rain drummed on the roofs of the parked cars
And the kids inside cried and daubed their chocolate and fought
And mothers and aunts and grandmothers
Were a tangle of undoing sandwiches and screwed-round gossiping heads
Steaming up the windows,
The stag loped through his favourite valley.
While the blue horseman down in the boggy meadow
Sodden nearly black, on sodden horses,
Spaced as at a military parade,
Again there is the contrasting smoothness of the stag’s movement, with ‘loped’ conjuring the idea of easy elegance. The ‘favourite valley’ again suggests an animal comfortable in its habitat.
The Stag