Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/354

 By shed and by paddock and gate

The strange, the magnificent black,

Led Darebin a length in the straight,

With thirty and one at his back.

But the Derby colt tired at the rails,

And Ivory's marvellous bay

Passed Burton, O'Brien, and Hales,

As fleet as a flash of the day.

But Gough on the African star

Came clear in the front of his "field,"

Hard followed by Morrison's Czar

And the blood unaccustomed to yield.

Yes, first from the turn to the end,

With a boy on him paler than ghost,

The horse that had hardly a friend

Shot flashing like fire by the post.

When Graham was "riding" 'twas late

For his friends to applaud on the stands,

The black, through the bend and "the straight,"

Had the race of the year in his hands.

In a clamour of calls and acclaim,

He landed the money—the horse

With the beautiful African name,

That rang to the back of the course.

Hurrah for the Hercules race,

And the terror that came from his stall,

With the bright, the intelligent face,

To show the road home to them all!

dauntless three! For twenty days and nights

These heroes battled with the haughty heights;

For twenty spaces of the star and sun

These Romans kept their harness buckled on;

By gaping gorges, and by cliffs austere,

These fathers struggled in the great old year.

Their feet they set on strange hills scarred by fire,

Their strong arms forced a path through brake and briar;