POETRY.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 879, 19 April 1877, Page 3

POETRY.

“THE PLACE WHERE THE OLD HORSE DIED.” In the hollow, by the pollard, where the crop is tall and rank Of the dock-leaf and the nettle growing free Where the bramble and the brushwood straggle blindly o’er the bank, And the pyat jerks and chatters on the tree, There’s a fence I never pass, In the sedges and the grass, But for very shame I turn my head aside, While the tears come thick and hot, And my curse is on the spot—’Tis the place where the old horse died. There’s his hoof upon the chimney, there’s his hide upon the chair— A better never bent him to the rein ; Now for all my love and care, I’ve an empty stall and bare, I shall never ride my gallant horse again ! How he laid him out at speed ! How he loved to have a lead ! How he snorted in his mettle and his pride ! Not a flyer of the hunt Was beside him in the front, At the place where the old horse died. Was he blown ?-I hardly think it. Did he slip ?—I cannot tell; We had run for forty minutes in the Yale; He was reaching at his bridle—he was going strong and well, He never seemed to falter or to fail. Though I sometimes fancy, too, That his daring spirit knew The task beyond the compass of his stride; Yet he faced it true and brave, And dropped into his grave - At the place where the old horse died. I was up in half a minute, bu t he never tried to stir Though I scored him with my rowells in the fall; In his life he had not felt before the insult of the spur, And I knew that it was over, once for all. When motionless he lay, In his cheerless bed of clay, Huddled up without an effort, on his side; ’Twas a hard and bitter stroke! For his honest back was broke At the place where the old horse died. With a neigh so faint and feeble that it touched me like a groan, “ Farewell,” he seemed to murmur, “era I die.” Then set his teeth and stretched his limbs. And so I stood alone, While the merry chase went heedless sweeping by. Am I womanly and weak If the tear was on my cheek, For a brotherhood that Death could thus divide ; If sickened and amazed, Through a woeful mist I gazed On the place where the old horse died ? There are both men good and wise who hold that in a future state Dumb creatures we have cherished here below, Shall give us joyous greeting when we pass the Golden Gate Is it folly that I hope it may be so ? For never man had friend More enduring to the end, Truer mate in every turn of time and tide; Could I think we’ll meet again It would lighten half my pain At the place where the old horse died ! G. J. Whyte Melville. VARIETIES. “ A kind word spoken to a husband will go farther than a broomstick or a flirtation,” says a woman of experience. A tailor who, in skating, fell through the ice, declared that he would never again leave a hot goose for a ‘ ‘ cold duck. ” When an original poem comes in written on both sides of a sheet of paper, the editor is happy. It goes to the waste-basket under rules that take the place of reading. “ The young wife leaned her head upon her husband’s shoulder, and, assailing him with the great sorcery of her eyes, gently murmured:—‘Augustus darling, how dull earth would be if life had no sentiment in it.’ ‘Ah, then, you have not forgotten, Evangeline, how you used to hang your bu«tle out of the window for me.’ ” —Brooklyn Art) ns. Philadelphia Bulletin .-—“Those auburnhaired young ladies with noses suggestive of a cold morning, who missed lire during the leap year just passed, now sadly sing, ‘ It may be four years and it may be for ever.’ ” Legal documents are not always dry reading. Here is a part of a Kentucky woman’s recent petition for divorce “Dark clouds of discord began to lower over the sky of wedded felicity, and the minacious lightning of disunion began to dart its lurid flames across gloomy clouds of atramental blackness, obscuring every star of hope and happiness, whose resplendent glory illuminated the dawn of the first few brief years of her wedded life, when she gave her hand and an undivided heart to the defendant, who, in the sultry month of July, 1867, when, after having been warmly and snugly wintered within the fond embraces of her loving arms, and closely nestled to a heart that beat alone for the defendant, he showed his base, blaek ingratitude by abandoning her bed and board without cause wdietever, except the insatiable thirst for novelty, which is the predominant character of defendant’s nature.” “Atlas,” writing to the World, says:— 11 J am grieved to discover that I have been for a long time past wearing unfashionable night-shirts. As many of my friends have probably been doing the same, I venture to quote the foliowring from the current number of ‘Myra’s Journal’: —‘Embroidered shirt fronts are not fashionable as formerly for evening wear. When used at all, only the merest line of needlework is seen. More fancifully embroidered fronts are used on nightshirts. These are made with deeply turned-over collars, a wririte linen cord and tassel round the neck, and a breast pocket, on which the initial or monogram is wrought. Other night shirts have a narrow ruffle of striped percale on the front, and a cord or line of color on the collar and cuffs. ’ am sure my male readers ■will feel grateful for this information, though they will probably w r ouder, as I do, how Miss Myra managed to pick up such elaborate information upon s(y difficult a subject.”