The new victor of our most-read poem is Hunter in the Forest, which has been read nearly 500 times.

The poem is part of my David Caspar Friedrich collection, poeticizing the German Romantic landscapist’s magnificent, symbolic paintings of divine proportions.

Hunter in the Forest

Man is want for divine decree
That what he wants is wanted of he,
To reckon selfish, innate desire
The beckon that gods oft require,
As hungry man merely eats
The feast that god so entreats,
Else would starve at banquets full,
Or in shame dine on food one stole,
But, nay, eat and enjoy it too,
Since, saith man, god made it for you—
Those wild, unmanned regions of haste
Divinely devised but for their taste,
Though, also, the darkness opposite good,
The untamed beast and unworked wood,
Which god’s harriers might there commit
And, thus, destroys all but inwit,
Destined by divine planner,
As provoked by god’s own will,
That church to fox is the tanner,
And that to birch is the mill,
Converted to coat, and cap, and board,
Befitting all man that god so chored.
Man’s mouth eschews his food,
Declaring hunger a crass cause rude,
Which seems too easy satisfied
To e’er befit man’s curséd pride;
Therefore, doth man in fancy bare
That powers eaten the eater share,
Imparting the strength of tiger cat,
Or stark perception of yon cave bat;
Hence, man’s hindsight prophecy,
Which grants the eyes wishes they see;
So, lost then is man’s harmony
When claims he sing in finer key.
Hunter, the fox you hunt is hunter, too,
Who takes the mouse not to imbue
His self in mousey trait and hue,
Nor since some god prescribed him do.
Ah, hunter, you see so much that simply is not,
Devising the end of your own plot,
Concluding what thee to thyself hath foretold
Derived from divine and heavenly mold,
But, no, hunter, the fox was not made for thee,
Nor the tree’s timber in cold December
Now burning and warming so valiantly,
As made before your germ and time—
Long before man’s holy rhyme—
And made not with you e’er in mind
As nature never once ensigned.
But, though, hunter, since you, as beast,
Are required to have thy feast,
Have been invited to life’s great table,
Whose other fair diners live not in fable,
And what beauty’s there in sharing food,
Though you think foxes a different brood,
With creatures simpler that to man decry:
Eat with thy stomach and not thy eye!

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