While one by one the rest of the cavaclade
Draw level
With her in the glade. Her sisters, Edith Southey and Mary Lovell,

Are astride a strawberry roan.
Their man-servant, Shad,
Is driving a spanking-new, iron-
Shod

Wagon in which Lovell himself is laid.
Three days ago, a wood-sprite
Worried his shoulder-blade.
The wound has begun to suppurate.

Messrs Allen, Burnett, Le Grice and Favell
Dismount and pitch
The first of several
Bell-tents. A pure-white spaniel bitch

Runs rings around them. Cinnamond builds
A fire, helps Lovell to the shelter of a cairn
Of stones and applies another poultice
Of hemlock-bark and acorns.

A thrum of hooves. If Southey is to Bucephalus
As a flame is to its wick
Then Southey is a flame.

He clutches a small, already-battered valise,
A sheaf of quills, a quire of vellum.
He cancels everything in his wake.