I rode with Gordon with Bull Run Hunt. He was the very picture of a distinguished Gentleman Foxhunter. I greatly enjoyed hunting with him, talking about current events with him and will miss him terribly. Once I fell during a hunt, and later I handed over a particularly fine bottle of Port to the hunt breakfast in payment, and it was Gordon or his fiance, Judy, who said, “You need to fall more often” . The classic wit of foxhunters. He will be missed.
The Last Fence
WHEN the last fence looms up, I am ready
And I hope when the rails of it crack
There’ll be nothing in front but the Master,
The Huntsman, the Fox, and the Pack;
And I hope when fate bids me go under
In this last of my manifold spills,
That we’re riding the line of a hill fox
With a half mile start to his hills.
I hope that last fence is a stiff one;
I hope, for the sake of our name,
They may say, ‘If the task was beyond them
They both of them went at it game!’
And when the white girths flash above me,
And darkness comes down on the field,
Let them carry me home on a hurdle
As the Spartan went home on his shield.
And when I am out of the running
Let the good men go on with the pack;
I would not one comrade should falter,
I would not one friend should turn back;
And whether it be on the grass-land,
The hill-side, the heath or the loam,
Let the gallant ones keep going for’ward-
The slow ones can carry me home.
Let them bury me down in the churchyard,
But lay my good horse where he fell;
When the ditches are blind in the autumm
Some friend may remember and tell,
While under the throng of the west wind
The day-nettle trembles and stirs:
‘Twas from here that a horseman undaunted
Went Home in his boots and his spurs’
- An english author whose name escapes me at the moment...
