The Skater

My glad feet shod with the glittering steel I 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 dream By 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 behind As 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 speed And silently went as a drifting seed, -- Slowly, furtively, till my eyes Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise, And the hair of my neck began to creep At 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.