Explore "Tommy Corrigan (Killed, Steeplechasing at Flemington.)" by Andrew Barton Paterson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You talk of riders on the flat, of nerve and pluck and pace, / Not one in fifty has the nerve to ride a steeplechase. / It's right enough while horses pull and take their fences strong, / To rush a flier to the front and bring the field along; / But what about the last half-mile, with horses blown and beat -- / When every jump means all you know to keep him on his feet?
When any slip means sudden death -- with wife and child to keep -- / It needs some nerve to draw the whip and flog him at the leap -- / But Corrigan would ride them out, by danger undismayed, / He never flinched at fence or wall, he never was afraid; / With easy seat and nerve of steel, light hand and smiling face, / He held the rushing horses back, and made the sluggards race.