God send me an ending as fair as his,
who died in his stirrups there!...”
Here is a race:—
“They came with the rush of the southern surf,
on the bar of the storm-girt bay;
and like muffled drums on the sounding turf
their hoof-strokes echo away.”
I know no poetry that describes the rush of horsemen quite as Gordon does. Take this description of the Balaclava charge from his “Lay of the Last Charger.”
“Now we were close to them, every horse striding
madly;—St. Luce pass’t with never a groan;—