open, lit up by the morn,
She flung the white foam-flakes from nostril to neck,
And chased him--I hatless, with shirt sleeves all torn
(For he may ride ragged who rides from a wreck)--
And faster and faster across the wide heath
We rode till we raced. Then I gave her her head,
And she--stretching out with the bit in her teeth--
She caught him, outpaced him, and passed him, and led.

We neared the new fence, we were wide of the track;
I look'd right and left--she had never been tried
At a stiff leap; 'twas little he cared on the black.
"You're more than a mile from the gateway," he cried.
I hung to her head, touched her flank with the spurs
(In the red streak of rail not the ghost of a gap);
She shortened her long stroke, she pricked her sharp ears,
She flung it behind her with hardly a rap--
I saw the post quiver where Bolingbroke struck,
And guessed that the pace we had come the last mile
Had blown him a bit (he could jump like a buck).
We galloped more steadily then for a while.

The heath was soon pass'd, in the dim distance lay
The mountain. The sun was just clearing the tips
Of the ranges to eastward. The mare--could she stay?
She was bred very nearly as clean as Eclipse;
She led, and as oft as he came to her side,
She took the bit free and untiring as yet;
Her neck was arched double, her nostrils were wide,
And the tips of her tapering ears nearly met--
"You're lighter than I am," said Alec at last;
"The horse is dead beat and the mare isn't blown.
She must be a good one--ride on and ride fast,
You know your way now." So I rode on alone.

Still galloping forward we pass'd the two flocks
At M'Intyre's hut and M'Allister's hill--
She was galloping strong at the Warrigal Rocks--
On the Wallaby Range she was galloping still--
And over the wasteland and under the wood,
By down and by dale, and by fell and by flat,
She gallop'd, and here in the stirrups I stood
To ease her, and there in the saddle I sat
To steer her. We suddenly struck the red loam
Of the track near the troughs--then she reeled on the rise--
From her crest to her croup covered over with foam,
And blood-red her nostrils, and bloodshot her eyes,
A dip in the dell where the wattle fire bloomed--
A bend round a bank that had shut out the view--
Large framed in the