There they go out of sight, over fence, to the Turn;
They are going still harder, they leave me astern.
They will never come back, I am lost past recall."
So he cried for a comfort and only gat gall.
In the glittering branches of the world without end,
Were the spirits, Em's Helper and Charles Cothill's Friend,
And the Force of Right Royal with a crinier of flame
There they breathed the bright glory till the summoning came.
From the Stand where Em watched, from the field where Charles rode,
From the mud where Right Royal in solitude strode,
Came the call of three spirits to the spirits that guard,
Crying, "Up now, and help him, for the danger bears hard."
There they looked, those immortals, from the boughs dropping balm,
But their powers were stirred not, and their grave brows were calm,
For they said, "He's despairing and the horse is still vext."
Charles cleared Channing's Blackthorn and strode to the next.
The next was the Turn in a bogland of rushes;
There the springs of still water were trampled to slushes;
The peewits lamented, flapping down, flagging far,
The riders dared deathwards each trusting his star.
The mud made them slither, the turn made them close,
The stirrup steels clinked as they thrust in their toes,
The brown horse Exception was struck as he rose,
Struck to earth by the Rocket, then kicked by the grey,
Then Thunderbolt smote him and rolled him astray.
The man on Exception, Bun Manor, fell clear
With Monkery's shoes half an inch from his ear,
A drench of wet mud from the hoofs struck his cheek,
But the race was gone from him before he could speak.
There Exception and Thunderbolt ended their race,
Their bright flanks all smeared with the mud of the place;
In the green fields of Tencombe and the grey downs of Churn
Their names had been glories till they fell at the Turn.
Em prayed in her place that her lover might know
Not to hurry Right Royal but let him go slow;
White-lipped from her praying, she sat, with shut eyes,
Begging help from her Helper, the deathless, the wise.
From the gold of his branches her Helper took heed,
He sent forth a thought to help Charles in his need.
As the white, gleaming gannet eyes fish in the sea,
So the thought sought a mortal to bring this to be.