Wild Hare Poem by Jan Struther

I HATE to watch them reaping the Five Acre,
The field at the hill's foot, steeply sloping.
One sees the pattern too clearly, with a God's-eye view:
Sees how Time, with soothing quotidian clatter,
Cuts his broad swathes, works inward from the edge;
Sees how the earliest rings-youth's endless summers-
Are leisurely and long; how they grow shorter
As the sun climbs. At noon
(One's children grown and flown)
There comes a lull, a respite: Time's trundling
Pauses; he eats his dinner under the hedge.
But soon, restored and eager
To race the sun, eye cocked to sky,
He's off again: and now the uncut square
Shrinks quickly to a patch; and Soul, wild hare,
Cowers in the heart of the corn, its shelter dwindling:
And I, watching, sicken and turn away.