My glad feet shod with the glittering steelI was the god of the wingèd heel.
The hills in the far white sky were lost;The world lay still in the wide white frost;
And the woods hung hushed in their long white dreamBy the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.
Here was a pathway, smooth like glass,Where I and the wandering wind might pass
To the far-off palaces, drifted deep,Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep.
I followed the lure, I fled like a bird,Till the startled hollows awoke and heard
A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang,As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang;
And the wandering wind was left behindAs faster, faster I followed my mind;
Till the blood sang high in my eager brain,And the joy of my flight was almost pain.
The I stayed the rush of my eager speedAnd silently went as a drifting seed, --
Slowly, furtively, till my eyesGrew big with the awe of a dim surmise,
And the hair of my neck began to creepAt hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.
Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.In the deep of my heart I heard my fear.
And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,From the white, inviolate solitude.
