Hark to the row at the rails! there’s a cow at the
Charge: how she laughs all their lashes to scorn!
Mark how she ran ag’in little Tom Flanagan!
Lucky for him that it wasn’t her horn:
He’d make no joke of it had he a poke of it.
There she comes back! but he’s put on his guard:
Greenhide descending now, sharp reports blending now,
Flogging her back up the wings of the yard.
The breeze brings their bellowing, soft’ning it, mellowing,
Till it sounds like a spent giant in pain—
Steals up the valley on, sounding a rally on
Sonorous hills that return it again.
Useless my whining now! useless repining now!
’Twon’t make me any less battered and scarred:
Though I’ve grown grey at it—oh, for a day at it!
Oh, for an hour ’twixt the wings of the yard!
Oh, how I yearn for those times! how I burn for those
Days when my weapons, the whip and the spur,
The double-reined bridle, were not hanging idle! . . .
But I’m old, and as useless as Stumpy—that cur:
No good for heeling now, he has a feeling now
Not unlike mine—that it’s woefully hard
We should be lying here, groaning and sighing here,
Watching the cattle come up to the yard.
