This poem is based on an extract taken from 'The Gamekeeper at Home' by Richard Jefferies. The extract is included below the poem. The book is available free online in various formats and is a fascinating insight into country life in the 1870's
The Crow (The impersonation of murder)
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Full vials of wrath are poured upon the dark and cruel crow
Who, like a poacher, full of guile, will kill and smile, that is his style
A gleaming, black assassin with a wicked face. He'll haunt the place
By killing he will grow.
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He often chooses weak and sickly victims for his prey
As he approaches from the back, for his attack, a skull will crack
It barely comes as a surprise, he will attack the face and eyes
He'll snatch their sight away
His pointed bill, a weapon which is skilfully deployed
Is like a dagger, sharp and keen. His method mean, each kill - routine
A fledgling that has fallen down from some high nest, he'll kill with zest
Of mercy - quite devoid
His choice of prey is varied and he'll kill what's close to hand
A partridge, rabbit, leveret, a precious pet, with no regret
With flurried wings and savage beak, he'll peck and stab, he'll pierce and jab
Death - as it was planned
They work in pairs and through the spring a nest they might attack
Meticulously one by one, as though for fun, until they're done
They kill each chick. The clutch destroyed. The crows have thoroughly enjoyed
A tasty summer snack
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The sullen crow flies to and fro and croaks it's mournful song
And in good time, it finds it best, to build its nest, the twigs compressed
Above the ground on some strong branch, into a crook, in some high nook
They do not stay there long
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The rookeries aren't hard to see. They're framed against the sky
The gamekeeper with practised skill, who knows the drill, will shoot to kill
He'll pierce the eggs inside the nest, thought safe from harm, cause great alarm
And many birds will die
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The workers in the fields believe crows harbingers of doom
Ominous omens in the sky, that signify, someone might die
When flying low over a roof, foretell a death, someone's last breath.
A strange thing to assume
Video courtesy of Matthew Fraser YouTube
Richard Jefferies
Extract from 'The Gamekeeper at Home'
by Richard Jefferies (1878)
But upon the crow the full vials of the keeper's wrath are poured, and not without reason. The crow among birds is like the local professional among human poachers: he haunts the place and clears everything--it would be hard to say what comes amiss to him. He is the impersonation of murder. His long, stout, pointed beak is a weapon of deadly power, wielded with surprising force by the sinewy neck. From a tiny callow fledgling, fallen out of the thrush's nest, to the partridge or a toothsome young rabbit, it is all one to him. Even the swift leveret is said sometimes to fall a prey, being so buffeted by the sooty wings of the assassin and so blinded by the sharp beak striking at his eyes as to be presently overcome. For the crow has a terrible penchant for the morsel afforded by another's eyes: I have seen the skull of a miserable thrush, from which a crow rose and slowly sailed away, literally split as if by a chisel--doubtless by the blow that destroyed its sight.
Birds that are at all diseased or weakly--as whole broods sometimes are in wet unkindly seasons--rabbits touched by the dread parasite that causes the fatal 'rot,' the young pheasant straying from the coop, even the chicken at the lone farmstead, where the bailiff only lives and is in the fields all day--these are the victims of the crow. Crows work almost always in pairs--it is remarkable that hawks, jays, magpies, crows, nearly all birds of prey, seem to remain in pairs the entire year--and when they have once tasted a member of a brood, be it pheasant, partridge, or chicken, they stay till they have cleared off the lot. Slow of flight and somewhat lazy of habit, they will perch for hours on a low tree, croaking and pruning their feathers; they peer into every nook and corner of the woodlands, not like the swift hawk, who circles over and is gone and in a few minutes is a mile away. So that neither the mouse in the furrow nor the timid partridge cowering in the hedge can escape their leering eyes. Therefore the keeper smites them hip and thigh whenever he finds them; and if he comes across the nest, placed on the broad top of a pollard-tree--not in the branches, but on the trunk--sends his shot through it to smash the eggs. For if the young birds come to maturity they will remain in that immediate locality for months, working every hedge and copse and ditch with cruel pertinacity. In consequence of this unceasing destruction the crow has become much rarer of late, and its nest is hardly to be found in many woods. They breed in the scattered trees of the meadows and fields, especially where no regular game preservation is attempted, and where no keeper goes his rounds. Even to this day a lingering superstition associates this bird with coming evil; and I have heard the women working in the fields remark that such and such a farmer then lying ill would not recover, for a crow had been seen to fly over his house but just above the roof-tree.
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Extract from 'The Gamekeeper at Home' by Richard Jefferies (1878)