Not long ago a circus wandered there, Where good King Cole most haunts the public way, Coming from Reading for St. Giles's Fair Through rain unceasing since Augustine's Day; The horses spent, the waggons splashed with clay, The men with heads bowed to the wester roaring, Heaving the van-wheels up the hill at Goring. Wearily plodding up the hill they went, Broken by bitter weather and the luck, Six vans, and one long waggon with the tent, And piebald horses following in the muck, Dragging their tired hooves out with a suck, And heaving on, like some defeated tribe Bound for Despair with Death upon their kibe. All through the morn the circus floundered thus, The nooning found them at the Crossing Roads, Stopped by an axle splitting in its truss. The horses drooped and stared before their loads. Dark with the wet they were, and cold as toads. The men were busy with the foundered van, The showman stood apart, a beaten man. He did not heed the dripping of the rain, Nor the wood's roaring, nor the blotted hill, He stood apart and bit upon his pain, Biting the bitter meal with bitter will. Focussed upon himself, he stood, stock still, Staring unseeing, while his mind repeated, "This is the end; I'm ruined; I'm defeated." From time to time a haggard woman's face Peered at him from a van, and then withdrew; [Illustration: _Within the cowboy's van the rat-eyed wife, Her reddish hair in papers twisted close. Turned wet potatoes round against the knife, And in a bucket dropped the peelèd Oes._ ] Seeds from the hayrack blew about the place, The smoke out of the waggon chimneys blew, From wicker creel the skinny cockerel crew. The men who set the floundered axle straight Glanced at their chief, and each man nudged his mate. And one, the second clown, a snub-nosed youth, Fair-haired, with broken teeth, discoloured black, Muttered, "He looks a treat, and that's the truth. I've had enough: I've given him the sack." He took his wrench, arose, and stretched his back, Swore at a piebald pony trying to bite, And rolled a cigarette and begged a light. Within, the second's wife, who leaped the hoops, Nursed sour twins, her son and jealousy, Thinking of love, in luckier, happier troupes Known on the roads in summers now gone by Before her husband had a roving eye, Before the rat-eyed baggage with red hair Came to do tight rope and make trouble there. Beside the vans, the clown, old Circus John, Growled to the juggler as he sucked his briar, "How all the marrow of a show was gone Since women came, to sing and walk the wire, Killing the clown his act for half his hire, Killing the circus trade: because," said he, "Horses and us are what men want to see."