One of my favourite poems is this rather sad one by William Wordsworth, called “The Childless Father”.
“Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton’s grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds.”
—Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet, and green,
On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen;
With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow,
The girls on the hills made a holiday show.
Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before,
Filled the funeral basin at Timothy’s door;
A coffin through Timothy’s threshold had past;
One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last.
Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray,
The horse and the horn, and the hark! hark away!
Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut
With a leisurely motion the door of his hut.
Perhaps to himself at that moment he said:
“The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead.”
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak;
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.
What struck me when I first read it was its rhythm: it is in triple metre (most of Wordsworth’s poetry is in duple metre). I believe it’s technically called anapaestic tetrameter: it evokes very powerfully indeed the sounds of galloping hooves in the poem.