For as much horse poetry as I’ve read (and that’s a lot) this one remains my favorite.

I discovered this poem while reading up for this series. I love it. It’s long, but absolutely worth it.

“The Horse Thief”
William Rose Benet

THERE he moved, cropping the grass at the purple canyon’s lip. 
His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his snow-white side,
For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral ship. 
I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil looped wide.

Dimly and dark the mesas broke on the starry sky.        5 
A pall covered every color of their gorgeous glory at noon.
I smelt the yucca and mesquite, and stifled my heart’s quick cry, 
And wormed and crawled on my belly to where he moved against the moon!

Some Moorish barb was that mustang’s sire. His lines were beyond all wonder. 
From the prick of his ears to the flow of his tail he ached in my throat and eyes.        10
Steel and velvet grace! As the prophet says, God had “clothed his neck with thunder.” 
Oh, marvelous with the drifting cloud he drifted across the skies!

And then I was near at hand—crouched, and balanced, and cast the coil; 
And the moon was smothered in cloud, and the rope through my hands with a rip!
But somehow I gripped and clung, with the blood in my brain aboil,—        15 
With a turn round the rugged tree-stump there on the purple canyon’s lip.

Right into the stars he reared aloft, his red eye rolling and raging. 
He whirled and sunfished and lashed, and rocked the earth to thunder and flame.
He squealed like a regular devil horse. I was haggard and spent and aging— 
Roped clean, but almost storming clear, his fury too fierce to tame.        20

And I cursed myself for a tenderfoot moon-dazzled to play the part, 
But I was doubly desperate then, with the posse pulled out from town,
Or I’d never have tried it. I only knew I must get a mount and a start. 
The filly had snapped her foreleg short. I had had to shoot her down.

So there he struggled and strangled, and I snubbed him around the tree.        25 
Nearer, a little nearer—hoofs planted, and lolling tongue—
Till a sudden slack pitched me backward. He reared right on top of me. 
Mother of God—that moment! He missed me … and up I swung.

Somehow, gone daft completely and clawing a bunch of his mane, 
As he stumbled and tripped in the lariat, there I was—up and astride        30
And cursing for seven counties! And the mustang? Just insane! 
Crack-bang! went the rope; we cannoned off the tree—then—gods, that ride!

A rocket—that’s all, a rocket! I dug with my teeth and nails. 
Why, we never hit even the high spots (though I hardly remember things),
But I heard a monstrous booming like a thunder of flapping sails        35 
When he spread—well, call me a liar!—when he spread those wings, those wings!

So white that my eyes were blinded, thick-feathered and wide unfurled 
They beat the air into billows. We sailed, and the earth was gone.
Canyon and desert and mesa withered below, with the world. 
And then I knew that mustang; for I—was Bellerophon!        40

Yes, glad as the Greek, and mounted on a horse of the elder gods, 
With never a magic bridle or a fountain-mirror nigh!
My chaps and spurs and holster must have looked it? What’s the odds? 
I’d a leg over lightning and thunder, careering across the sky!

And forever streaming before me, fanning my forehead cool,        45 
Flowed a mane of molten silver; and just before my thighs
(As I gripped his velvet-muscled ribs, while I cursed myself for a fool), 
The steady pulse of those pinions—their wonderful fall and rise!

The bandanna I bought in Bowie blew loose and whipped from my neck. 
My shirt was stuck to my shoulders and ribboning out behind.        50
The stars were dancing, wheeling and glancing, dipping with smirk and beck. 
The clouds were flowing, dusking and glowing. We rode a roaring wind.

We soared through the silver starlight to knock at the planets’ gates. 
New shimmering constellations came whirling into our ken.
Red stars and green and golden swung out of the void that waits        55 
For man’s great last adventure; the Signs took shape—and then

I knew the lines of that Centaur the moment I saw him come! 
The musical-box of the heavens all around us rolled to a tune
That tinkled and chimed and trilled with silver sounds that struck you dumb, 
As if some archangel were grinding out the music of the moon.        60

Melody-drunk on the Milky Way, as we swept and soared hilarious, 
Full in our pathway, sudden he stood—the Centaur of the Stars,
Flashing from head and hoofs and breast! I knew him for Sagittarius. 
He reared, and bent and drew his bow. He crouched as a boxer spars.

Flung back on his haunches, weird he loomed—then leapt—end the dim void lightened.        65 
Old White Wings shied and swerved aside, and fled from the splendor-shod.
Through a flashing welter of worlds we charged. I knew why my horse was frightened.  He had two faces—a dog’s and a man’s—that Babylonian god!

Also, he followed us real as fear. Ping! went an arrow past. 
My broncho buck-jumped, humping high. We plunged … I guess that’s all!        70
I lay on the purple canyon’s lip, when I opened my eyes at last— 
Stiff and sore and my head like a drum, but I broke no bones in the fall.

So you know—and now you may string me up. Such was the way you caught me. 
Thank you for letting me tell it straight, though you never could greatly care.
For I took a horse that wasn’t mine!… But there’s one the heavens brought me,        75 
And I’ll hang right happy, because I know he is waiting for me up there.

From creamy muzzle to cannon-bone, by God, he’s a peerless wonder! 
He is steel and velvet and furnace-fire, and death’s supremest prize;
And never again shall be roped on earth that neck that is “clothed with thunder” … 
String me up, Dave! Go dig my gravel! I rode him across the skies,        80

I almost named Tristan after Sheridan’s horse in this poem. His name was Rienzi, renamed Winchester after his arrival at the battle, and today he’s taxidermied and on display at the Smithsonian. (He doesn’t look as grim as you’d think.)

“Sheridan’s Ride”
Thomas Buchanan Read

This is a poem I discovered while getting ready for posting all these, and I love it.

“The Pearl of Them All”
William Henry Ogilvie

Gaily in front of the stockwhip
The horses come galloping home,
Leaping and bucking and playing
With sides all a lather of foam;
But painfully, slowly behind them,
With head to the crack of the fall,
And trying so gamely to follow
Comes limping the pearl of them all.

He is stumbling and stiff in the shoulder,
And splints from the hoof to the knee,
But never a horse on the station
Has half such a spirit as he;
Give these all the boast of their breeding
These pets of the paddock and stall,
But ten years ago not their proudest
Could live with the pearl of them all.

No journey has ever yet beat him,
No day was too heavy or hard,
He was king of the camp and the muster
And pride of the wings of the yard;
But Time is relentless to follow;
The best of us bow to his thrall;
And death, with his scythe on his shoulder,
Is dogging the pearl of them all.

I watch him go whinnying past me,
And memories come with a whirl
Of reckless, wild rides with a comrade
And laughing, gay rides with a girl —
How she decked him with lilies and love-knots
And plaited his mane at my side,
And once in the grief of a parting
She threw her arms round him and cried.
And I promised — I gave her my promise
The night that we parted in tears,
To keep and be kind to the old horse
Till Time made a burden of years;
And then for his sake and one woman’s…
So, fetch me my gun from the wall!
I have only this kindness to offer
As gift to the pearl of them all.

Here! hold him out there by the yard wing,
And don’t let him know by a sign:
Turn his head to you — ever so little!
I can’t bear his eyes to meet mine.
Then — stand still, old boy! for a moment …
These tears, how they blind as they fall!
Now, God help my hand to be steady…
Good-bye! — to the pearl of them all!

I run hot and cold on Ted Hughes; he was Sylvia Plath’s husband, and I generally find him a bit opaque and modern. But he wrote quite a bit about horses. This one is probably my favorite.

“The Horses”
Ted Hughes

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird –
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline – blackening dregs of the brightening grey –
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey – ten together –
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments

Of a grey silent world.

I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew’s tear turned its edge on the silence.

Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted

Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,

And the big planets hanging –
I turned

Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,

And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,

Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them

The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,

Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays –

In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

I find Kipling at times over-wrought, and this poem definitely has elements of it, but he knew his horses.

“White Horses”
Rudyard Kipling

Where run your colts at pasture?
  Where hide your mares to breed?
'Mid bergs about the Ice-cap
  Or wove Sargasso weed;
By chartless reef and channel,
  Or crafty coastwise bars,
But most the ocean-meadows
  All purple to the stars!

Who holds the rein upon you?
  The latest gale let free.
What meat is in your mangers?
  The glut of all the sea.
'Twixt tide and tide's returning
  Great store of newly dead, --
The bones of those that faced us,
  And the hearts of those that fled.
Afar, off-shore and single,
  Some stallion, rearing swift,
Neighs hungry for new fodder,
  And calls us to the drift:
Then down the cloven ridges --
  A million hooves unshod --
Break forth the mad White Horses
  To seek their meat from God!

Girth-deep in hissing water
  Our furious vanguard strains --
Through mist of mighty tramplings
  Roll up the fore-blown manes --
A hundred leagues to leeward,
  Ere yet the deep is stirred,
The groaning rollers carry
  The coming of the herd!

Whose hand may grip your nostrils --
  Your forelock who may hold?
E'en they that use the broads with us --
  The riders bred and bold,
That spy upon our matings,
  That rope us where we run --
They know the strong White Horses
  From father unto son.

We breathe about their cradles,
  We race their babes ashore,
We snuff against their thresholds,
  We nuzzle at their door;
By day with stamping squadrons,
  By night in whinnying droves,
Creep up the wise White Horses,
  To call them from their loves.

And come they for your calling?
  No wit of man may save.
They hear the loosed White Horses
  Above their fathers' grave;
And, kin of those we crippled,
  And, sons of those we slew,
Spur down the wild white riders
  To school the herds anew.

What service have ye paid them,
  Oh jealous steeds and strong?
Save we that throw their weaklings,
  Is none dare work them wrong;
While thick around the homestead
  Our snow-backed leaders graze --
A guard behind their plunder,
  And a veil before their ways.

With march and countermarchings --
  With weight of wheeling hosts --
Stray mob or bands embattled --
  We ring the chosen coasts:
And, careless of our clamour
  That bids the stranger fly,
At peace with our pickets
  The wild white riders lie.

 . . . .

Trust ye that curdled hollows --
  Trust ye the neighing wind --
Trust ye the moaning groundswell --
  Our herds are close behind!
To bray your foeman's armies --
  To chill and snap his sword --
Trust ye the wild White Horses,
  The Horses of the Lord!

Happy Poetry Month! I love poetry, and am always seeking out more poetry about horses in particular. So for April I thought I’d do a poem a day. I’ll start with one of my favorite horse poems of all time.

“The Runaway”
Robert Frost

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,