The High-mettled Racer

See the course throng’d with gazers, the sports are begun,
The confusion, but hear: I bet you, Sir! done! done!
Ten thousand strange murmers resound far and near,
Lords, hawkers, and jockies, assail the tir’d ear,
While with neck like a rainbow, erecting his crest,
Pamper’d, prancing, and pleas’d, his head touching his breast;
Scarcely snuffing the air, he’s so proud and elate,
The high-mettled racer first starts for the plate.

Grown aged, us’d up, and turn’d out of the stud;
Lame, spavin’d, and wind-gall’d, but yet with some blood:
While knowing postillions his pedigree trace,
Tell his dam won this sweepstakes, his sire gain’d that race:
And what matches he’d won to the hostlers count o’er,
As they loiter their time at some hedge alehouse door,
While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his sides goad,
The high-mettled racer’s a hack on the road.

Till at last, having labour’d, drudg’d early and late,
Bow’d down by degrees, he bends to his fate;
Blind, old, lean, and feeble, he tugs round a mill,
Or draws sand till the sand of his hour-glass stands still.
And now cold and lifeless, expos’d to the view,
In the very same cart which he yesterday drew;
While a pitying crowd his sad relics surrounds,
The high-mettled racer is sold for the hounds.