THE MERCHANT'S SON
When Hugh was up his mare went drifting
Sidelong and feeling with her heels
For horses' legs and poshay wheels,
While lather creamed her neat clipt skin.
Hugh guessed her foibles with a grin.
He was a rich town-merchant's son,
A wise and kind man fond of fun,
Who loved to have a troop of friends
At Coln St. Eves for all week-ends,
And troops of children in for tea,
He gloried in a Christmas Tree.
And Polly was his heart's best treasure,
And Polly was a golden pleasure
To everyone, to see or hear.
Poor Polly's dying struck him queer,
He was a darkened man thereafter,
Cowed silent, he would wince at laughter
And be so gentle it was strange
Even to see. Life loves to change.
Now Coln St. Evelyn's hearths are cold
The shutters up, the hunters sold,
And green mould damps the locked front door.
But this was still a month before,
And Polly, golden in the chaise,
Still smiled, and there were golden days,
Still thirty days, for those dear lovers.
SPORTSMAN
The Riddens came, from Ocle Covers,
Bill Ridden riding Stormalong,
(By Tempest out of Love-me-long)
A proper handful of a horse,
That nothing but the Aintree course
Could bring to terms, save Bill perhaps.
All sport, from bloody war to craps,
Came well to Bill, that big-mouthed smiler;
They nick-named him "the mug-beguiler,"
For Billy lived too much with horses
In coper's yards and sharper's courses,
To lack the sharper-coper streak.
He did not turn the other cheek
When struck (as English Christians do),
He boxed like a Whitechapel Jew,
And many a time his knuckles bled
Against a race-course-gipsy's head.
For "hit him first and argue later"
Was truth at Billy's alma mater,
Not love, not any bosh of love.
His hand was like a chamois glove
And riding was his chief delight.
He bred the chaser Chinese-white,
From Lilybud by Mandarin.
And when his mouth tucked corners in,
And scent was high and hounds were going,
He went across a field like snowing
And tackled anything that came.
