But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and ahead like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and
knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a
favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.

And as the company passed from the valley, into a higher ground,
The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow, and on the mound, Until nothing was left, nothing at all except the body of Sorrow,
That rose in time, to float upon the surface of the eaten soil.

The stars of heaven never looked down on a more pitiful sight than that of a horse, after having drudged faithfully all his days in the service of his lord, cast out in his helpless old age to wander and perish.

Suddenly I am pushed by a movement of the horse on which I am lying. I see that he has turned his great head aside; he is mournfully eating grass. I saw this horse but lately in the middle of the regiment — I know him by the white in his mane — rearing and whinnying like the true battle-chargers; and now, broken somewhere, he is silent as the truly unhappy are.

While the grasse groweth the horse starveth.

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.

Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through brawn and bone I drave the stone And slew him upon the brink.

On a little heap of Barley
Died my aged uncle Arly,
And they buried him one night;—
Close beside the leafy thicket;—
There, his hat and Railway-Ticket;—
There, his ever-faithful Cricket;—
(But his shoes were far too tight.)

The poor old Past,
The Future's slave,
She drudged through pain and crime
To bring about the blissful Prime,
Then — perished. There's a grave!

The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?

Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.