Do you know a poem called ‘The Fox and the Goose’?

A class I was teaching a few years ago liked it so much that we decided to turn it into a radio play.

Their first task was to set the scene. There is not, you may say, much clue to it in the poem. We learn that it is a bright moonlight night, and that is all. However, it did not require much effort to begin to imagine the scene. This is how their play opens:

First Narrator. The moon, breaking out from behind the scudding clouds, illuminates the clock on the tower of the village church. The clock, old as it is, tells truly that it is midnight.

The silver light of the moon shows us, too, a grey ribbon stretching endlessly across the undulating moors; it is the road leading to the isolated farm of Farmer Hippie-Hopple, far from the hustle and bustle of town and city.

Second Narrator. Here an unnerving quiet lingers, broken only by the groaning of the gnarled and weatherbeaten trees, grotesque figures standing in a semi-circle behind the farm.