14 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



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 rnorn : 

 But his famous fathers dead 

 Were Arabs all, and Arabs bred ; 

 And the last of that great line 

 Trod like one of 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 lived (none else would he obey 

 Through all the hot Arabian day), 

 And died, untamed, upon the sands 

 Where Balkh amidst the desert stands ! " 



Nature has assigned to many races of animals cer- 

 tain geographical limits, beyond which they cannot 

 thrive. Others, on the contrary, are so framed as to 

 be capable of maintaining life and health in countries 

 very widely diffused, and essentially differing in tem- 

 perature, climate, and food, from those to which they 

 appear indigenous. Fortunately for man, among this 

 number are some of those animals that render him 

 the most essential services, as the dog, the ox, the 

 sheep, the hog, and the horse. The constitution of 

 these useful allies is endowed with a capacity for 

 adapting itself, more or less, to external circum- 



