They’re come to town from each dot on the compass, they’re
Wild as tinkers and groomed to an eyelash,
And light of foot as a champion featherweight
Prance on the top of the morning.
They walk the ring, so glossy and delicate
Each you’d think was a porcelain masterpiece
Come to life at the touch of a raindrop,
Tossing its mane and its halter.
The shy, the bold, the demure and the whinnier,
Grey, black, piebald, roans, palominos
Parade their charms for the tweedy, the quite un-
susceptible hearts of the judges.
Now and again at the flick of an instinct,
As if they’d take off like a fieldful of rooks, they will
Fidget and fret for the pasture they know, and
The devil take all this competing.
The light is going, the porter is flowing,
The field a ruin of paper and straw.
Step neatly home now, unprized or rosetted,
You proud Connemara ponies.