From Sunset until Dawn-of-Day,
My forehead frozen with the Frost,
I shut mine eyes like Wolf-at-Bay
And sing to find the Sheep I've lost.
When Angels walk at Break-of-Day
Among pale wormwood on the lea,
Upon the Night-of-Power, they say,
My smiling soul came unto me.
It had a palace of pure gold
In Paradise and yet it chose
To leave the Heat-of-Heaven for Cold
And help me find the Sheep I love.
So in the Dark and in the Snow
We twain make up one Perfect-Whole
And sing glad songs the while we go
A Smiling-Shepherd, Smiling-Soul.
Dawn came at last and they moved down the glen. It was not the usual road,--that was more circuitous--but with the snow filling up the valley and obliterating precipices, ravines, crevasses, there seemed a chance of being able to manage a shorter route, and time meant so much to those exhausted men.
Yet Babar himself halted for awhile, and so did a few of his immediate followers when his horse stumbled, fell, could not rise.
"Take mine, my liege," said half-a-dozen voices. But the young man's face set.
"I will not leave the beast," he said resolutely. "It hath done me good service and may do it again. See you! bring some of the men's lances and their halter ropes. Samûr and I live together, or die together," and he laid his young cheek to the horse's soft muzzle affectionately.
Then starting up, he set the men to work to form a criss-cross raft or sledge of lances on to which Samûr was pulled by main force.
"'Tis all down hill now," said he when it was finished, and seizing a rope strained at it.