Wild Goose Shot at Midnight

From the regions of the north
Where the waters now are frozen,
Towards the south they issue forth
A flock of wild geese of four dozen.

But when they flew o’er the river Thames
They swooped down to take a dive,
But sport with shot gun at them aims
And one at least did not survive.

And he now says it tasted fine,
And that it was both fat and big,
A hungry man did on it dine,
Satisfied with just one leg.

He was sorry fowl to kill,
But they awoke him from his slumber,
The air with cackle they did fill,
And thus they lost one of their number.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L16.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Wild Goose Shot at Midnight.” First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/wild-goose-shot-at-midnight/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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