Explore "The Old Whim Horse" by Edward Dyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly, / And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft, / With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly / And he bears all over the brands of graft; / And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder / Why by night and day now the whim is still, / Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder / Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill.
In that whim he worked when the night winds bellowed / On the riven summit of Giant's Hand, / And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed / All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land; / And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning, / And he knew the calls of the boys below; / Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning, / He had taken his stand by the old whim bow.