Jack's Last Muster
The first flush of grey light, the herald of daylight,
Is dimly outlining the musterer's camp,
Where over the sleeping, the stealthily creeping
Breath of the morning lies chilly and damp,
As, blankets forsaking, 'twixt sleeping and waking,
The black-boys turn out to the manager's call;
Whose order, of course, is, "Be after the horses,
And take all sorts of care you unhobble them all."
Then, each with a bridle (provokingly idle)
They saunter away his commands to fulfil -
Where, cheerily chiming, the musical rhyming
From equine bell-ringers comes over the hill.
But now the dull dawning gives place to the morning,
The sun, springing up in a glorious flood
Of golden-shot fire, mounts higher and higher,
Till the crests of the sandhills are stained with his
blood.
Now the hobble-chains' jingling, with the thud of hoofs
mingling,
Though distant, sound near - the cool air is so still -
As, urged by their whooping, the horses come trooping
In front of the boys round the point of the hill.
What searching and rushing for bridles and brushing
Of saddle marks, tight'ning of breastplate and girth;
And what a strange jumble of laughter and grumble -
Some comrade's misfortune the subject of mirth.
I recollect well how that morning Jack Bell
Had an argument over the age of a mare,
That C O B gray one, the dam of that bay one
Which Brown the storekeeper calls the young Lady
Clare.
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poem by Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake
Added by Poetry Lover
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