Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a fine novelist but an ever finer poet. His true love, I was always feel, was poetry. He wrote novels for income. Some of his greatest poems came paradoxically after the death of his first wife, a woman he increasingly ignored while alive. Guilt, grief, and regret made for great poems. Some of his poems take a lot of unravelling, but this one is very clear. We can hear the auctioneer’s voice. I wonder if the poem made many vegetarians, and don’t you identify with the cows as they are battered by life just like you and me.

‘Here’s a fine bag of meat.’

Says the master auctioneer,

As the timid, quivering steer,

Starting a couple of feet,

At the prod of a drover’s stick,

And trotting lightly and quick,

A ticket stuck on his rump,

Enters  with a bewildered jump.

‘Where he’s lived lately, friends,

I’d live till lifetime ends:

They’ve a whole day everyday

Down there in the Vale, have they!

He’d be worth the money to kill

And give away Christmas for goodwill.’

‘Now here’s a heifer—worth more

Than bid, were she bone-poor;

Yet she’s round as a barrel of beer’;

‘She’s a plum,’ said the second auctioneer.

‘Now this young bull—for thirty pound?

Worth that to manure your ground!’

‘Or to stand,’ chimed the second one,

‘And have his picture done!’

The beast was rapped on the horns and snout

To make him turn about.

‘Well,’ cried a buyer, ‘another crown—

Since I’ve dragged her here from Taunton Town!’

‘That calf, she sucked three cows,

Which is not matched for bouse

In the nurseries of high life

By the first-born of a nobleman’s wife!’

The stick falls, meaning, ‘A true tale’s told,’

On the buttock of the creature sold,

And the buyer leans over and snips

His mark on one of the animal’s hips.

Each beast, when driven in,

Looks around at the ring of bidders there

With a much-amazed reproachful stare,

As at unnatural kin,

For bringing him to a sinister scene

So strange, unhomelike, hungry, mean;

His fate the while suspended between

A butcher, to kill out of hand

And a farmer, to keep on land;

One can fancy a tear runs down his face

When the butcher wins, and he’s driven from the place.