Classic Poem

Nell

Nellie Rakerfield
Came from an estate in Scotland,
Two years old, and won a championship.
It was not her fault that her foals
Were few, and mostly died or were runted.
She worked every day when she raised them,
Never was tired of dragging her
Nineteen hundred pounds
About the farm and the roads, with
Great loads behind it.

She never kicked, bit, nor crowded
In the stall,
Was always ready at a chirp
And seemed to have forgotten delicate care.

But the day they hitched her
To the corpse of her six-months-old colt,
She tried to run away, half way to the bush.
She never seemed quite so willing, afterward.
But the colt was too heavy.