The old mare dozes by the orchard fence,
Her unkempt tail to wind, her head to sun;
She's glad the winter's over and at length
The tardy summer really has begun.
Each leg she rests in turn, for each is sore;
Her mouth is stained by the grass she quids;
Her winter-matted coat is all awry;
Her eyes are hidden by their rheumy lids;
But still she likes the sun, and soothed by its warm gleams
She nods her gaunt old head and dreams and dreams. . . .
And now she's ploughing, now she's three years old,
Her nostrils ruffied by the keen March wind;
She feels again the splendour of her thighs,
She hears old John call from the plough behind:
'Steady, my beauty! Steady, lass!' cries he,
And as each great sleek muscle bunches and flows,
Arching her neck, conscious of praise, she goes,
All pride and strength, courage and certainty. . . .
And now she's in the paddock, and it's spring,
And she's that sprightly, vivid, bright-eyed thing
She was when that spring burgeoned, twenty years ago.
And as she slumbers her old throat does know
Again the wonder of new milk, of the new grass,
Of the sweet, juicy, new-shot hawthorn tips
Nipped by the unroughed velvet of her lips. . . .
Then in a moment all these merge and pass
In one upwelling of that time when she
First knew her strength and galloped, fleet and free,
Down the Long Pasture, round the Spinney there,
And back again, and never turned a hair.
Too keen the echo of that ecstasy -
Her knobbed old limbs, responsive to the thrill,
Tremble beneath her as she's standing still,
And with a start she wakes, to wonder how
She is so old and failed who was so young but now.