Poor Victims of a misbegotten hate!

Your patient service and unselfish toil

Too often ended in a mound of soil

Encrimsoned by libation poured to Fate.

Though you were massive, with slow-trailing gait

And gentle eyes aghast at such turmoil

Of shell-torn earth that seemed to toss and boil

With scalding wrath of Acheron in spate,

Or stepped it lightly as the startled deer,

With pointed ears alert, and nervous snort

At every gun’s nerve-shattering report,

When all your tingling fibre shrank with fear:

You both obeyed your rider’s voice and knee,

As frightened, as superbly brave as he.