AFTER Elizabeth Burns’s ancient mosaic hare in Wednesday’s daily poem, here is a description of the fascinating creatures in full life and vigour. The piece comes from Andrew Young’s Selected Poems (Carcanet, £9.95). The poet, who was born in Elgin and schooled in Edinburgh, was a cleric had the distinction of beginning his career as a minister in the Church of Scotland and ending it in the Church of England, having moved to Sussex after the First World War. He died in 1971 at the age of 86, having never lost his love of Scotland's landscapes, its flora and its fauna.

MARCH HARES

I made myself as a tree,

No withered leaf twirling on me;

No, not a bird that stirred the boughs,

As looking out from wizard brows

I watched those lithe and lovely forms

That raised the leaves in storms.

I watched them leap and run,

Their bodies hollowed in the sun

To thin transparency,

That I could clearly see

The shallow colour of their blood

Joyous in love’s full flood.

I was content enough,

Watching that serious game of love,

That happy hunting in the wood

Where the pursuer was the more pursued,

To stand in breathless hush

With no more life myself than tree or bush.