Page:Where the Dead Men Lie.djvu/104

 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.