Page 37 - Poetry-Animals

If some one now a stranger
Drop apples in thy manger,
And fetch thee sugar in his pocket too
Thou’lt eat—perhaps—and yet to me be true,
Nor let the stranger learn the secret sign
That makes thee lift thy foot and bow so fine.

But when I’m gone, who’ll ride thee,
Caress, or even chide thee?
Will other understand thy playful tricks,
Thy curvetings and antics, bucks and kicks?
Will other let thee shy on loosened rein,
And let thee have thy head o’er every plain?

And who will drive thee, pony,
O’er roughish roads and stony?
Ah, Wilding, cunning rogue, I’ll not forget
The day I paid a friend a friendly debt
And loaned thee: how thou brokest trace and rein
And, leaving him, sped home to me again!

They say that I’ll forget thee
And nevermore will pet thee,
When I have learned to love some maiden fair.
I say that she with thee my love shall share!
If I must love thee less to love her more
I’ll love thee as I love thee now thrice o’er!

I’ll see thee in the spring-time,
For birds and me the wing-time
To take the northward flight. Together then
We’ll seek the lanes, and run and race again.
But, Wilding-pony, I must leave thee now.
Farewell! Now whinny, lift thy foot, and bow!

— John Eliot Bowen (Century Magazine, 1888)

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