In a valley, long, long ago,
in the summer of a time gone by,
Between towering Mountains, a River did sow
the seeds of a Valley of Snow.
Sunlight bellowed through the air
sweeping proudly past frosted floes -
In the mists shone a rainbow fair,
'cross bleached banks of powdered snow.

Rising up from behind an unmarked dune,
long twin tufted ears there twitched -
A snowshoe hare, alert, in tune,
with the cats that would have it bewitched.
In a warm blanket of blinding fur,
shimmering pure as the still-virgin snow,
"To a darker coat?" he did demur -
unlike his cousins in the hills below!

For upon yonder hill, ears all a-perk,
a contently purring cat, aprowl -
Carrying a rabbit, its latest work:
flailing feebly in its sabre'd jowls!
Wailing at its pitiful fate, afoot,
the brown snowhare sniffled out loud -
Its conformity to its cousins, moot,
while carried away in happy bounds.

"Woe! O Woe - O Woe is me!
Woe that we're naught but food...
And woe be to those accursed cats -
that we die in accord to their mood!
Weak and feeble, contrite am I -
Oh, that I'd been born a kitten too!
An igasho of that cave deep in the mountainside,
Or one of those wyverns I see fly by!"

"I'd be freed then from these oh-so-wretched days,"
our young white showshoe hare cried!
"These transient days oft full of flight -
wistfully dreaming about a reign of might!"
"But no," he sighed, nigh silently -
"I've no wish to eat my peers!
They've wrongèd neither me nor mine
and shouldn't be eaten at all I fear!"

"O wherefore am I a snowy hare -
and wherefore art thou so brown?
And why did you try to run away there -
if only you'd hidden behind a mound (like me)!
Our fates juxtaposed, I thus cringe at your blight...
for if only the kitten'd been colourblind -
(Or, if you'd only nibbled at the grasses at night) -
You'd have taken my place, here, and I thine!"