young and commanding but _not_ a herdsman, might have raised it, and he cried: ‘Gentlemen, open to me and my honourable little donkey.’ They opened--I have misjudged Spaniards in my time!--those gates opened to the man and the bull together, and closed behind them. And then? From the Mayor to the Guarda Civile they went mad for five minutes, till the trumpets blew and the fifth bull rushed out--an unthinking black Andalusian. I suppose some one killed him. My friend, my very dear friend, to whom I have opened my heart, I confess that I did not watch. Christophe and I we were weeping together like children of the same Mother. Shall we drink to Her?” ALNASCHAR AND THE OXEN There’s a pasture in a valley where the hanging woods divide, And a Herd lies down and ruminates in peace; Where the pheasant rules the nooning, and the owl the twilight tide, And the war-cries of our world die out and cease. Here I cast aside the burden that each weary week-day brings And, delivered from the shadows I pursue, On peaceful, postless Sabbaths I consider Weighty Things-- Such as Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew! At the gate beside the river where the trouty shallows brawl, I know the pride that Lobengula felt, When he bade the bars be lowered of the Royal Cattle Kraal, And fifteen miles of oxen took the veldt. From the walls of Bulawayo in unbroken file they came To where the Mount of Council cuts the blue ... I have only six and twenty, but the principle’s the same With my Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew! To a luscious sound of tearing, where the clovered herbage rips, Level-backed and level-bellied watch ’em move-- See those shoulders, guess that heart-girth, praise those loins, admire those hips, And the tail set low for flesh to make above! Count the broad unblemished muzzles, test the kindly mellow skin And, where yon heifer lifts her head at call, Mark the bosom’s just abundance ’neath the gay and clean-cut chin, And those eyes of Juno, overlooking all! Here is colour, form and substance! I will put it to the proof And, next season, in my lodges shall be born Some very Bull of Mithras, flawless from his agate hoof To his even-branching ivory, dusk-tipped horn. He shall mate with block-square virgins--kings shall seek his like in vain, While I multiply his stock a thousandfold, Till an hungry world extol me, builder of a lofty strain That turns one standard ton at two years old!