The March wind blew the smell of the crowd,
All men there seemed crying aloud,
But over the noise a louder roar
Broke, as the wave that bursts on shore,
Drowns the roar of the wave that comes,
So this roar rose on the lesser hums,
"I back the field. I back the field."
Man who lives under sentence sealed,
Tragical man, who has but breath
For few brief years as he goes to death,
Tragical man by strange winds blown
To live in crowds ere he die alone,
Came in his jovial thousands massing,
To see Life moving and Beauty passing.
They sucked their fruit in the wooden tiers
And flung the skins at the passers' ears;
Drumming their heels on the planks below,
They sang of Dolly of Idaho.
Past, like a flash, the first race went.
The time drew by to the great event.
At a quarter to three the big bell pealed;
The horses trooped to the Saddling Field.
Covered in clothing, horse and mare
Pricked their ears at the people there;
Some showed devil, and some, composure,
As they trod their way to the great enclosure.
When the clock struck three and the men weighed out,
Charles Cothill shook, though his heart was stout.
The thought of his bets, so gaily laid,
Seemed a stone the more when he sat and weighed.
As he swung in the scales and nursed his saddle,
It seemed to him that his brains would addle;
For now that the plunger reached the brink,
The risk was more than he liked to think.
In ten more minutes his future life,
His hopes of home with his chosen wife,
Would all depend on a doubtful horse
In a crowded field over Compton Course.
He had backed Right Royal for all he owned.
At thought of his want of sense he groaned.
"All for a dream of the night," he thought.
He was right for weight at eleven naught.
Then Em's sweet face rose up in his brain,
He cursed his will that had dealt her pain:
To hurt sweet Emmy and lose her love
Was madman's folly by all above.
He saw too well as he crossed the yard
That his madman's plunge had borne her hard.
"To wring sweet Em like her drunken father,
I'd fall at the Pitch and end it rather.
Oh I hope, hope, hope, that her golden heart
Will give me a word before I start.
If I thought our love should have come to wreck,
I'd pull Right Royal and break my neck,
And Monkery's shoe might kick my brains out
That my own heart's blood might wash my stains out.