Joanna Baillie: The Horse and His Rider

Most of the rhymes have rhymed vowels sounds that match each other acoustically, put some, such as "break" and "neck", "enlock" and "smoke", and "bend" and "sand" only have the final consonant sound in common.

The oral communication is clearly archaic to the contemporary ear ("thy", "thou", "thine", "rearest", "ring'st", "whilst", "thee") just her mastery of words and her ability to sculpt vivid pictures apply them as building blocks is still obvious.

The front two lines straightaway sketch a powerful, energyous, muscular horse. "Braced in the hempen vigour of thy breed" is an engaging first line. "Sinewy vigour" and "generous strength" give a sense of power, as does "stately", with its implication of majesty. This is echoed in the succeeding(a) line by "broad chest", with the suggestion of courage as it is " effrontery" to "the battle's front".

"Thy mane fair floating to the wings of nirvana" is a truly great line. It brings to mind heroic illustrations of Pegasus dissipated in the sky trailing his long mane, with the stars and moon behind.

"Thy stamping hoofs the rocky pebbles break" is almost give care a cutaway in an historical period film showing a close-up of the horse's hooves as he gallops. "Graceful the rising of thine arched neck" is in any case a lovely verbal image, with "rising" lending a sense of soaring up from the earth into the sky.

The "foam" from the horse's babble out and the "curling smoke" that "bursts" from "thy moved n

"Thy curving haunches bend" is effective both sonically and as a optic image. "Thy sweepy tail involved with clouds of sand" is another feat close-up that indicates a cinematic sensibility a hundred geezerhood before the invention of film.

ostrils" give very graphic depictions of the visual details of a horse in motion. The "kindling eye-balls" of the next line connect with the "smoke", and suggest the horse is internal respiration fire almost like a mythical dragon.

" horrifying is the thunder of thy mouth" gives us an acoustic dimension first alluded to in "stamping hoofs". This is in keeping with Romantic notions of evoking all the senses in poetry.

Joanna Baillie: Synthesis of Romanticism, Nationalism, and Feminism. http://www.alexanderstreet2.com/SWRPlive/bios/S7020-D001.html

By the time Fugitive Verses was create in the 1840s Britain was securing its grip on much of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, which like the other European imperialists, it simply stole by pressure of superior arms. None of this seems to trouble Ms. Baillie, who instead lends her unquestioned genius to such a tawdry, immoral endeavour. It is a perfect input on the spirit of an age that had not come to term with the human cost of European colonialism, something few writers of today could hack and still be relevant to their age.

http://digital.lib.ucdavis.edu/projects/bwrp/Works/BailJFugit.htm#p100Slagle, Judith Bailey.

And we can buoy say she was a child of her times - the daughter of a rural Scottish minister who wrote the words for many Protestant hymns as well as popular Scottish songs, ne'er bre
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