We are time-tested, tried-and-true workhorses.
The wonder-working saints have ridden us.
Great painters of the past have used gold sources
to gild our hooves on icons more than once.

We’ve bent our backs beneath the weight we hauled:
the canine knights and knights of noble pennants.
And one of ours, the most unwise of all,
once drove Caligula into the Senate.