Duncan, who was a keen horseman, and his wife Rose Marie, bred Arabian horses on their Devonshire property.
[4][5] The poem has inspired various people such as Lucinda Green, British world champion eventer and Olympic medal winner, who when writing in Country Life describes the bond that is formed between man and horse as being founded on Duncan's observations expressed in the poem.
[6] The English journalist and horseman Alistair Stewart who, when writing in the Daily Mail about the death of a family pony said, "Ronald Duncan’s poem, The Horse, captures it perfectly: ‘Nobility without pride, friendship without envy, beauty without vanity.’"[7] The poem has been reproduced in a number of specialist equine publications.
[11] To the rhetorical question posed in the poem: Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride, friendship without envy, or beauty without vanity?
[12] John Strawson, the British soldier and author wrote in his memoires entitled Hussars, Horses and History, "Those fortunate to have owned, ridden and loved horses will be in no doubt when we emphatically endorse the answer to Ronald Duncan's question.