Transcription
[pointer-finger symbol] The following in the Celebrated Song written and composed by the la[ripped]
CHARLES DIBDIN, ESQ.
And from which is taken
The New Pantomime,
CALLED THE
High Mettled Racer;
OR,
Harlequin on Horseback!
Now Performing with unbounded Applause, from crowded Audience, at this Theatre.
FIRST VERSE.
[Description of and illustrated by the Horse Race in the first Scene.]
See the Course thronged with gazers, the sports are begun,
The confusion but hear, I bet you Sit, done done,
Ten thousand strange murmurs resound far and near,
[smudged]nls, Hawkers, and Jockies assail the tir’d ear.
While with neck like a rainbow erecting his crest,
Tamper’d, prancing and pleas’d, has his head touching his breast,
Scarcely snuffing the air he’s so proud and elate,
The high mettled Racer first starts for the plate.
SECOND VERSE.
[The Four first Lines are snug to the depict the beginning of the Fox Chace.]
New Reynard’s turned out, and o’er hedge and ditch rush;
Dogs, Horses and Huntsmen al hard at his brush,
Thro’ marsh, fen and brier, led by their fly prey,
They be scent and by view cheat a long tedious way.
[The latter Four Lines are sung at the conclusion of the Chace of Death of the Fox in the 12th Scene.]
While alike born for sports of the Field and the Course,
Always sure to come through—a staunch and fleet horse;
When fairly run down the Fox yields up his breath,
The high mettl’d Racer is in at his death.
THIRD VERSE
[Sung in the Fourteenth Scene, where the Horse, (as a Road Hack) draws the Post Chaise to the Hedge Ale-House Door.]
Grown aged, us’d up, and turn’d out of the stud,
Lame, Spavin’d and wind-gall’d, but yet with some blood,
While knowing Postillions his pedigree trace,
Tell his Da[smudged] won this sweepstakes, his Sire that race,
And what matches he won to the hostlers count o’er,
As they loiter their time at some hedge Ale-house Door,
While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his sides goad,
The high mettled Racer’s a hack on the road.
FOURTH VERSE.
[The First Four Lines as sung in the Eighteenth Scene, where the High Mettled Racer is seen is his last Stage drawing a Sand Cart.]
Till at last having labour’d, drudg’d early and late,
Bow’d down by degrees he bends on to his fate;
Blind, old, lean, and feeble, he tugs round a mill,
Or draws sand will the sand of his hour glass stands still.
[The Four Last lines are sung in the Twentieth Scene [ripped] Dying Horses, where the Horse, apparently [ripped]
And new cold and lifeless expos’d [ripped]
In the very same cart which [ripped]
While a pitying croud [sic] his [ripped]
The high mettled Racer [ripped]
