Frederick C. Palmer

“ One day he was hired to a cockney,
Who galloped him hard to the meet,
Who thought that a horse was a kind of machine,
And whose hands were as bad as his seat.
That day the hounds had a good run, sir,
They turned a fox out of the gorse;
That cockney, he galloped for miles on the road,
Which is terrible hard on a horse. ”

“ THE BLACK FROST HAS BROKEN AT LAST.
The black frost has broken at last,
The days of our sadness have passed,
The warm rain is falling so soft on the ground:
Here’s a health to the horse,
Here’s a health to the hound,
Here’s a health to the hunting horn’s glorious sound,
And we meet at the squire’s i’ the morning.
Ye skaters away with your skates,
The Ice-King hath ended his fêtes,
Put your skates in your cupboards and fasten the locks,
And bring out your hunters [Pg 18]
From stall and from box,
For once more we’ll go hunting the little red fox,
And we meet at the squire’s i’ the morning. ”

“ In the days of his youth he’d have been at the front, [Pg 39]
And not let another horse pass:
But years always tell on a horse, sir,
The same as they tell on a man,
And to clatter down roads with a fool on his back
’Twas impossible quite, no horse can.
The cockney was frightened of fences,
On the King’s hard, high road he would go,
So he flogged and he spurred for an hour and a half,
And cried that the horse was too slow. ”