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The Borrowed Horse

Edward S. Sorenson

“Now, there’s a horse,” said Stringybark,
“You don’t see every day;
“If ‘twasn’t for the saddle mark
You’d think he was a gay young spark,
The same old rusty bay.

“A speedy moke and quiet to ride,”
Said Stringybark to me:
“He’s frisky now an’ sleek of hide
Through spellin’ by the riverside,
An’ touchy, too, maybe.

But hop aboard, an’ never mind
About him goin’ round;
‘Tis just a way of th’ eager kind,
An’ you’ll be quite surprised to find
How he gets over ground.”

I mounted then with confidence,
An’ was at once surprised;
He bounded through the sapling fence,
A bucking, bolting pestilence,
As I soon realised.

He tore across the gilghi flat
And thundered through, the trees;
I lost my pipe and dropped my hat,
While hanging hard on reins I sat,
Pad-gripping with my knees.

Across the bush he thundered still,
With mouth as hard as wood,
And bounding over log and rill,
Accelerated down a hill
For many a rocky rood.

And it surprised me when I found,
As Stringy said I would,
The way that horse got over ground,
And over gullies at a bound,
As ne’er a brumby could.

He kicked and plunged through wet and dry
For miles and miles away,
Till he was spent, as, too, was I;
Then propped and wheeled about hard by
A quag of puddled clay.

There I, perforce impelled to quit,
Dismounted on my head;
But ‘twas a soft place, I admit,
To separate from that unfit
Cyclonic quadruped.

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