James Stephens gives us a brief, gritty scene from a Dublin cab ride. The speaker watches the driver closely: his rough chin, slack lips, crooked smile, and little eyes full of years of cunning. The horse is even more pitiful—ribby, stiff-kneed, old, and barely able to hold up its head. Still, the speaker gets in the cab. Then the tone shifts from observation to a wider compassion. He reflects that any of us could end up like this driver or this horse, worn down by poverty and age. The final lines feel both tender and bleak: no one knows how life will end, and the old poor find little peace. The mood is weary, humane, and quietly sorrowful.
To the Four Courts, Please — Summary
The driver rubbed at his nettly chin With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black, And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in, And puffed out again and hung down slack : One fang shone through his lop-sided smile, In his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.
And the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked, And its ears hung down, and its eyes were old, And its knees were knuckly, and as we talked It swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold Its big, skinny head up — then I stepped in, And the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.
God help the horse and the driver too, And the people and beasts who have never a friend, For the driver easily might have been you, And the horse be me by a different end. And nobody knows how their days will cease And the poor, when they're old, have little of peace.