Note: This poem is best read aloud in an Australian accent!
Him going to ride for us! Him - with the pants and the eyeglass and all.
Amateur! don't he just look it - it's twenty to one on a fall.
Boss must be gone of his head to be sending our steeplechase crack
Out over fences like these with an object like that on his back.
Ride! Don't tell me he can ride. With his pants just as loose as balloons,
How can he sit on a horse? and his spurs like a pair of harpoons;
Ought to be under the Dog Act, he ought, and be kept off the course.
Fall! why, he'd fall off a cart, let alone off a steeplechase horse.
Yessir! the 'orse is all ready - I wish you'd have rode him before;
Nothing like knowing your 'orse, sir, and this chap's a terror to bore;
Battleaxe always could pull, and he rushes his fences like fun -
Stands off his jump twenty feet, and then springs like a shot from a gun.
Well, he's down safe as far as the start, and he seems to sit on pretty neat,
Only his baggified breeches would ruinate anyone's seat -
They're away - here they come - the first fence, and he's head over heels for a crown!
Good for the new chum, he's over, and two of the others are down!
Second time round, and by Jingo! he's holding his lead of 'em well;
Hark to him clouting the timber! It don't seem to trouble the swell.
Now for the wall - let him rush it. A thirty foot leap, I declare -
Never a shift in his seat, and he's racing for home like a hare.
Battleaxe, Battleaxe, yet - and it's Battleaxe wins for a crown;
Look at him rushing the fences, he wants to bring t'other chap down
Rataplan never will catch him if only he keeps on his pins;
Now! the last fence, and he's over it, Battleaxe, Battleaxe wins!
Well, sir, you rode him just perfect - I knew from the fust you could ride.
Some of the chaps said you couldn't, an' I says just like this a' one side:
Mark me, I says, that's a tradesman - the saddle is where he was bred.
Weight! you're all right, sir, and thankyou; and them was the words that I said.
