The Riding School.

My poems are meant to be read aloud, so I tried to get the lines to flow.

Reminds me a little bit of Betjeman, but more up to date, obviously, and somehow more gentle. Because it isn't tightly structured, the conversational tone works really well. Oh dear, I am not trying to be teacherly, just to explain how it hit me!

HUNTER TRIALS

It's awfully bad luck on Diana,
Her ponies have swallowed their bits;
She fished down their throats with a spanner
And frightened them all into fits.

So now she's attempting to borrow.
Do lend her some bits, Mummy, do;
I'll lend her my own for tomorrow,
But today I'll be wanting them too.

Just look at Prunella on Guzzle,
The wizardest pony on earth;
Why doesn't she slacken his muzzle
And tighten the breech in his girth?

I say, Mummy, there's Mrs. Geyser
And doesn't she look pretty sick?
I bet it's because Mona Lisa
Was hit on the hock with a brick.

Miss Blewitt says Monica threw it,
But Monica says it was Joan,
And Joan's very thick with Miss Blewitt,
So Monica's sulking alone.

And Margaret failed in her paces,
Her withers got tied in a noose,
So her coronet's caught in the traces
And now all her fetlocks are loose.

Oh, it's me now I'm terribly nervous
I wonder if Smudges will shy
She's practically certain to swerve as
Her Pelham is over one eye.

Oh wasn't it naughty of Smudges?
Oh, Mummy, I'm sick with disgust.
She threw me in front of the Judges,
And my silly old collarbone's bust.

John Betjeman

I like Betjeman, though he is now out of fashion because his rhyming schemes were considered too rigid. I especially like Joan Hunter Dunne. He wrote about the people and culture he knew, just as Austen did.

Love it Scarlet21 - so so true!!!
Also love John Betjeman- his insights into society are brilliant.

Well, I like Betjeman and Kipling. I can forgive Betjeman anything for saving St Pancras Station and loving Cornwall as much as I do.

John Betjeman's Hunter Trials and Thelwell's cartoons. Memories of ponies, gymkhanas and so much fun.

What a great thread. I loved your poem, Scarlet 21, it brought back so many happy memories of riding lessons with my daughters. The now we're middle class bit made me lol

I'm pleased to say that my DSs didn't get involved in matters equestrian. But it sounds about right to me, *Scarlet8.

I got in trouble from my daughters when they read this poem as adults. They were quite sure they had always been very grateful! I had to explain that my poetry wasn't always about them!

Ode to the Horse by Robert Duncan

`Where in this wide world can men find nobility without pride,

Friendship without envy, or beauty without vanity?

Here, where grace is laced with power and strength tempered by gentleness.

He serves without servility, he has force without enmity.

There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent.

There is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.

Our pioneers were borne on his back,

Our history is his industry.

We are his heirs and he is our inheritance...

The horse.'

I like it Scarlett especially the last verse. I enjoy John Betjemans poems particularly 'How To Get On In Society'.

Do they still read Ode To The Horse at the end of the Horse of the Year Show?

DH and I used to wipe away tears hoping the kids weren't looking.

scarlet that's great, thanks for posting it for us

My daughter shared a couple of ponies with the girls next door and we were about as far from middle class as you could get. Imagine a cross between Thelwell and the Grundys in The Archers

Love it Aka - horses are wonderful creatures with such nobility.

I shall never forget DD face on her 10th birthday when she discovered the pony she thought she was looking after for a friend was really hers. That very cheap but super pony became very expensive as I re-discovered my love of all things equine !!

Thelwell and Betjeman - 2 of my favourites with differing humours !

I'm going to get a 'horse fix' at Southwell tomorrow but a plan now that I [should] have the time is to visit my friends dressage horses. She retired a few years ago and I keep seeing her driving round the village on her way to looking after them. Yes; that poem that they read out at the Horse of the Year Show makes me cry. Did'y know, by the way that they have done a statue to Sefton, the police horse? It's just been unveiled.