Or sometimes, feeling full of fight, He hurried out to scour the plain; And, seeing some approaching Knight, He either hurried home again, Or hid; and, when the foe was past, Blew a triumphant trumpet-blast.
One day when good Sir Thomas Tom Was resting in a handy ditch, The noises he was hiding from, Though very much the noises which He’d always hidden from before, Seemed somehow less…. Or was it more? The trotting horse, the trumpet’s blast, The whistling sword, the armour’s squeak, These, and especially the last, Had clattered by him all the week. Was this the same, or was it not? Something was different . But what? Sir Thomas raised a cautious ear And listened as Sir Hugh went by,
And suddenly he seemed to hear (Or not to hear) the reason why This stranger made a nicer sound Than other Knights who lived around. Sir Thomas watched the way he went— His rage was such he couldn’t speak, For years they’d called him down in Kent The Knight Whose Armour Didn’t Squeak! Yet here and now he looked upon Another Knight whose squeak had gone. He rushed to where his horse was tied; He spurred it to a rapid trot. The only fear he felt inside About his enemy was not “How sharp his sword?” “How stout his heart?” But “Has he got too long a start?”
