Name Of Horses Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCD EFGA HIJA KLBM NAOP QRST UVCH W| All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars padding | A |
| and steerhide over the ash hames to haul | B |
| sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer | C |
| for the Glenwood stove next winter and for the simmering range | D |
| - | |
| In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields | E |
| dark manure of Holsteins and knobs of your own clustered with oats | F |
| All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield the mowing machine | G |
| clacketing beside you while the sun walked high in the morning | A |
| - | |
| and after noon's heat you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres | H |
| gathering stacks and dragged the wagon from stack to stack | I |
| and the built hayrack back uphill to the chaffy barn | J |
| three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning | A |
| - | |
| Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load | K |
| a leather quartertop buggy and grazed in the sound of hymns | L |
| Generation on generation your neck rubbed the windowsill | B |
| of the stall smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass | M |
| - | |
| When you were old and lame when your shoulders hurt bending to graze | N |
| one October the man who fed you and kept you and harnessed you every morning | A |
| led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond | O |
| and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin | P |
| - | |
| and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear | Q |
| and fired the slug into your brain and felled you into your grave | R |
| shoveling sand to cover you setting goldenrod upright above you | S |
| where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument | T |
| - | |
| For a hundred and fifty years in the Pasture of dead horses | U |
| roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs | V |
| yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn and in winter | C |
| frost heaved your bones in the ground old toilers soil makers | H |
| - | |
| O Roger Mackerel Riley Ned Nellie Chester Lady Ghost | W |
Donald Hall
(4)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about Name Of Horses poem by Donald Hall
Best Poems of Donald Hall