C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Charles Graham Halpine (1829–1868)
The Trooper to His Mare
O
On pawing hoofs that were never loath,
Our gallop to-day may be the last
For you, or for me, or perhaps for both!
As I tighten your girth do you nothing daunt?
Do you catch the hint of our forming line?
And now the artillery moves to the front,
Have you never a qualm, Bay Bess of mine?
As you move to the battle’s cloudy marge,
And to feel the swells of your wakening heart
When our sonorous bugles sound a charge.
At the scream of the shell and the roar of the drum
You feign to be frightened with roguish glance;
But up the green slopes where the bullets hum
Coquettishly, darling, I’ve known you dance.
Your eyes are a bird’s, or a loving girl’s;
And from delicate fetlock to stately head
A throbbing vein-cordage around you curls.
O joy of my heart! if you they slay,
For triumph or rout I little care;
For there isn’t in all the wide valley to-day
Such a dear little bridle-wise, thoroughbred mare!