Walt Mason's "Horse Sense" in Verses Tense (1915) opens with a striking structural choice: a page of laudatory blurbs from figures like William Dean Howells and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, followed by a dedication to Doyle and a poem titled "Christmas Gift" that pivots from material value to emotional intent. This juxtaposition sets the tone for a collection that consistently undercuts its own earnestness. The excerpts reveal a poet who blends moralizing fables with sudden, comic deflation—as when a rhapsody on forest voices collapses into a complaint about ants climbing his pants. Mason's diction is deliberately plain, peppered with colloquialisms like "by heck" and "doggone," and his verse often adopts the rhythm of rhymed couplets or quatrains, lending a folk-ballad quality to his observations on work, integrity, and rural life.

Abrupt Tonal Shifts as a Signature Device

One of Mason's most distinctive authorial choices is the sudden tonal pivot within a single poem. In "The Bard in the Woods," he begins with elevated language: "What wondrous voices have the trees when they are rocked by morning breeze!" and invokes Eden and "a thousand spheres." But within a few lines, the speaker cries, "Doggone these measly, red-backed ants! They will keep climbing up my pants!" The shift from sublime nature worship to petty irritation is jarring and deliberate. Mason uses this technique repeatedly, as when a meditation on "the sordid madding crowd" gives way to a bee sting and a retreat to the back yard. This pattern suggests a skepticism toward romantic posturing—a refusal to let pastoral idealism stand unchallenged. The effect is both humorous and deflating, grounding lofty sentiments in bodily reality.

Colloquial Diction and the Voice of Common Sense

Mason's language is studded with informal, regional expressions that anchor his verse in everyday American speech. Phrases like "by jings," "I ween," "you can't bust or wear them out," and "it's a sell" appear alongside more standard poetic diction. In "Sticking to It," the narrator recalls running a beeswax store "at Punktown-in-the-Hole," a name that signals a comic, down-home setting. The moral lessons—often about honesty, persistence, or quality—are delivered not through abstract maxims but through concrete, colloquial anecdotes. For instance, in "Values," old Hiram Hucksmith insists on "silver mounted tacks" and "choicest oak," while his rival Jabez Jenkins uses "pine, where rosewood should have been." The contrast is drawn in plain terms, and the reader is left with a proverb-like conclusion: "Give value for the shining yen." Mason's diction thus serves his thematic emphasis on practical wisdom, or "horse sense."

Moral Fables Embedded in Commercial and Rural Life

Many of the excerpted poems function as modern fables, with characters whose names—Hiram Hucksmith, Jabez Jenkins—suggest archetypal tradesmen. The settings are small-town or rural: a wagon shop, a beeswax store, a forest retreat. The conflicts are economic and ethical: Hiram builds honest wagons that "you cannot bust or wear them out," while Jenkins cuts corners and faces ruin. The moral is explicit: "Old Hiram's plan should suit all men who climb Trade's rugged hill." Similarly, "Sticking to It" implies a lesson about perseverance in an unpromising business. Mason does not rely on animal allegory (as Aesop does) but on human characters and their tangible products. The fables are grounded in material details—green wagons with red wheels, blue wagons with pink spokes—that make the moral concrete. The tone is wry but not cynical; the poems reward honest labor and punish deceit, aligning with the "horse sense" of the title.

Rhyme, Meter, and the Prose Poem Form

Though the subtitle promises "verses tense," Mason's poems are written in loose, often irregular meter, with a preference for rhymed couplets and quatrains. The rhythm is conversational, sometimes bumpy, as in "The gift may have a hollow ring—The love behind it is the thing!" He frequently uses end-stopped lines and simple rhyme schemes (AABB or ABAB), which give the poems a singsong, almost nursery-rhyme quality. However, the content is often satirical or moralistic, creating a tension between the light form and the serious intent. The catalog classifies the work as "prose poems, American," and indeed many pieces read like rhymed prose paragraphs, with line breaks that follow natural speech pauses rather than strict metrical feet. This formal looseness allows Mason to shift tone abruptly and to include colloquial asides without breaking the poem's flow. The result is a hybrid form that feels both artless and crafted, suited to the plain-spoken wisdom Mason aims to convey.

Readers approaching "Horse Sense" in Verses Tense should expect not a sustained narrative but a series of short, punchy poems that reward attention to their verbal surprises. Mason's humor often depends on the reader catching the shift from high to low, or recognizing the regional flavor of a phrase. The morals are rarely subtle, but the pleasure lies in the telling—the unexpected bee sting, the absurd name "Punktown-in-the-Hole." These poems are best taken one or two at a time, allowing each small fable to land before moving on.