The Blood Horse- Bryan Walter Procter

[Helga]

I've been looking for this poem but can't seem to find it. Every site I find about Procter is either in a language I don't speak or they say he was not a good poet. I saw this poem in the beginning of an old version of 'Black Beauty' and I wrote the name down but I don't remember any part of the poem....

does anyone know what I'm talking about or can help me find it...

[Logos]

I like it :)

http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=37869&poem=459519

The Blood Horse

GAMARRA is a dainty steed,
Strong, black, and of a noble breed,
Full of fire, and full of bone,
With all his line of fathers known;
Fine his nose, his nostrils thin,
But blown abroad by the pride within!
His mane is like a river flowing,
And his eyes like embers glowing
In the darkness of the night,
And his pace as swift as light.

Look,—how ’round his straining throat
Grace and shifting beauty float!
Sinewy strength is on his reins,
And the red blood gallops through his veins;
Richer, redder, never ran
Through the boasting heart of man.
He can trace his lineage higher
Than the Bourbon dare aspire,—
Douglas, Guzman, or the Guelph,
Or O’Brien’s blood itself!

He, who hath no peer, was born
Here, upon a red March morn:
But his famous fathers dead
Were Arabs all, and Arab bred,
And the last of that great line
Trod like one of a race divine!
And yet,—he was but friend to one
Who fed him at the set of sun,
By some lone fountain ’fringed with green:
With him, a roving Bedouin,
He liv’d,—(none else would he obey
Through all the hot Arabian day,)—
And died untam’d upon the sands
Where Balkh amidst the desert stands!

Barry Cornwall

[Logos]

The Oxford Dictionary of National biography lists him as Bryan Waller Procter, (1787–1874).

"Barry Cornwall" is a pseudonym, one of a few that he published his poems under in various journals that were mostly panned. He also wrote one play, a blank-verse tragedy Mirandola that gained him a small amount of success. However after many bad reviews he "abandoned" himself to law, studying in London, and became a lawyer. He was then appointed commissioner of asylums which he performed until his retirement years.

He was great friends with many of the up-and-coming writers and poets of the day, including Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray, who gathered at the literary salon he and his wife held in London. It is said however he never found a poetic voice of his own.

He wrote Selections from Robert Browning (1863) and Charles Lamb: a Memoir (1866) in homage to great friends.

[Helga]

thank you so much Logos.