Would God! some gift of Pentecostal powers
Could bid them speak our tongue and say their
say,
Then from each rolling cab and thundering dray
A wail would rise and shake your London towers;
Crying, “What once ran fetlock deep in flowers,
Now doomed in maze in barren bricks to stay,
Night brings no rest to help the weary day,
Life has no joy, death’s case alone is ours.”
Spavined and splinter-boned and sore of heel,
Tongues hanging pained o’er bits of froth and
blood,
With dim, full eyes, heads hanging down,
they come,
The troop of silent sufferers; like a flood
Man’s pity pours to meet them; hearts that feel
Have bid them welcome to the Horses’ Home.
(Middlesex and Surrey Express, 8 January 1900, p. 3)