We breathe about their cradles,
We race their babes ashore,
We snuff against their thresholds,
We nuzzle at their door;
By day with stamping squadrons,
By night in whinnying droves,
Creep up the wise White Horses,
To call them from their loves.
And come they for your calling?
No wit of man may save.
They hear the loosed White Horses
Above their father’s grave;
And, kin of those we crippled,
And, sons of those we slew,
Spur down the wild white riders
To school the herds anew.
What service have ye paid them,
Oh jealous steeds and strong?
Save we that throw their weaklings,
Is none dare work them wrong;
While thick around the homestead
Our snow-backed leaders graze—
A guard behind their plunder,
And a veil before their ways.
With march and countermarchings—
With weight of wheeling hosts—
Stray mob or bands embattled—
We ring the chosen coasts:
And, careless of our clamour
That bids the stranger fly,
At peace within our pickets
The wild white riders lie.
* * * * *
Trust ye the curdled hollows—
Trust ye the neighing wind—
Trust ye the moaning groundswell—
Our herds are close behind!
To bray your foeman’s armies—
To chill and snap his sword—
Trust ye the wild White Horses,
The Horses of the Lord!
THE SECOND VOYAGE
We’ve sent our little Cupids all ashore—
They were frightened, they were tired, they were cold;
Our sails of silk and purple go to store,
And we’ve cut away our mast of beaten gold.
(Foul weather!)
Oh ’tis hemp and singing pine for to stand against the brine,
But Love he is the master as of old!
The sea has shorn our galleries away,
The salt has soiled our gilding past remede;
Our paint is flaked and blistered by the spray,
Our sides are half a fathom furred in weed,
(Foul weather!)
And the doves of Venus fled and the petrels came instead,
But Love he was our master at our need!