An eloquent refrain to a dead horse

An eloquent refrain to a dead horse given on the occasion of an unnoticed beating

by john valley

This horse

See it there?

This horse which is dead and gone but not yet buried, Horatio, no not yet buried, though somewhat the worse for wear

This horse you see

Why do you beat it so?

It’s dead

and no livelier than any other horse in a similar condition

Let it go, and now forsake this bloody peroration
so free of any substantiation
never resting in elation
never ending in duration

Let it go, I say! and beat this stupid horse no more

It has no wit to see, to wit,
that anything you might say to it
has any merit under it

Let it go! Be done with it!

It's just a horse

quite dead

and not worth all your steaming rhetoric which here you do continue, seeming unawares of its sad state, to keep on heaping onto it

It's just a horse

and you, Horatio, are just the back end part of it