ASTLEY’S HORSE.
[The following interesting communication has reached us from an Irish gentleman, who was for many years a well-known Member of the House of Commons.—Ed. O. a W.]
To the Editor of “Once a Week.”
Sir,
Your Correspondent, “Abr. Cooper, R.A.” (in your Number of the 10th of January last),[1] painted the Spanish horse in the possession of Davis, Astley’s successor. I have ridden him.
He was an entire horse of a rich dark bay, as playful at his great age as a foal, and as easy as a pony in his action. I rode him in 1805-6. His wind was gone, but he could canter a few turns round the circle handsomely, and was used occasionally for Davis’s pupils (of whom I was one), and every night of the performances for various tricks. He would take a kettle off a fire of shavings; and he was ridden by Davis himself to show that most difficult of all “airs” to teach a horse, viz., performing the perfect action of the trot without moving from one spot. I think it is called the Piaffe. He used to do this to the tune of “Nancy Dawson,” surrounded by blazing fireworks.
A horse in performing this “air” to music is supposed by the vulgar to dance to the music; but of course the truth is that the music plays to the horse. Davis used to say that the horse was then forty-two years old.
Sir,
Your obedient servant,
Philippus.
PAN VINCTUS—PAN VICTOR.
I.
Pan sate blowing his pipe of reeds,
Where the ferns branched over him,
And the sun’s great orb of burning gold
Was hid by an oak’s huge limb:
He piped to the Fauns and the Nymphs unseen,
And the Dryads hiding the boughs between,
In that fir wood mossy and dim.
II.
He sate and played on his magic pipe
Under the fir-tree’s odorous cones,
The nightingales with envy heard
The wealth of those deep, rich tones,
Fluting, gurgling, trilling, thrilling,
All the woods with music filling,
Cheering the gods on their thrones.
III.
The sunshine played round his laughing face,
The shadows crept to his feet,
The birds came fluttering round the boughs
To hear that song so sweet,
Flowing, rippling, fluttering, rising,
Or with a gladdening joy surprising,
As of a cymbal beat.
IV.
The mole crept up to listen and mark,
The squirrel stole down to hear,
For joy the very fish in the stream
Were leaping far and near,
As the pipe was breathing softly, lowly,
Now soaring swift, now sinking slowly,
With a mirth that laughed at fear.
V.
Two hunters, tracking a wounded stag,
Came peeping through the trees,
With pursed-up mouths and hands to their ears,
To catch and question the breeze:
They heard the pipe, like a wild bird singing,
Pour out its pure and silvery ringing,
As they stealthily couched on their knees.
VI.
They leaped out fierce on the heedless Pan,
With bow-strings bound his hands;
They led him back to the little town,
Followed by boors in bands.
Loosing him then, they set him playing,
And the notes went soaring, fluttering, swaying,
Over the stubble lands.
VII.
Then the fishermen threw down their spangled nets,
And the vineyardmen their knives,
And slaves came running to hear the song,
With the youths, and children, and wives,
As the notes went gushing and bubbling forth,
With echoes that answered from south to north,
As thick as bees from their hives.
VIII.
“Brain him!” cried out a butcher’s slave;
While a priest whispered “Sacrifice;”
And a murderous thirst for the Satyr’s blood
Reddened the fishermen’s eyes.
But still the music went rippling on,
The glad notes chasing the glad notes gone,
Like runners seeking a prize.
IX.
Then Pan blew a longer, wilder note,
And the fir woods stirred and shook,
Then there came a rush of hairy hoofs
Down the banks and over the brook.
And still the pipe went murmuring,
As the stream bursts forth from its mountain spring:
There were Satyrs in every nook!
X.
And on with a lusty shout they came,
Clashing cymbals with might and main,
Waving sheep-crooks in homage rude,
Dancing welcome over the plain;
And still their Monarch sate still and played,
By neither priest nor slave dismayed,
Nor by their threatening train.
XI.
Then Pan, in his anger, changed those men
To aspens, and such poor shivering trees,
And ever since they have stood by that town
Trembling to every fitful breeze,
As if that pipe was murmuring still,
Sending its magic o’er plain and hill,
O’er river, rocks, and leas.
- ↑ See No. clxxxiii., p. 8, and No. clxxxv., p. 82.
