Ballads of Lost Haven Part 7

I was the runner of all Roch.e.l.le, Could run with the hounds on Haric Fell;

And something stark as a gust of the sea Had a grip of the whimsy boy in me.

I ran like the drift on the ice low curled When the winds of Yule are abroad on the world.

Sudden, the beat of a throbbing sound Lost in the core of the blue profound:

"Kelpie, Kelpie, Kelpie, come!"

Was it my heart?--But my heart was numb.

"Kelpie, Kelpie!" Was it the sea?

Far on, at the verge of Bareau lea,

I saw like an army, s.h.i.+eld and casque, The breakers roll in the Roads of Basque.

"Kelpie, Kelpie!" Was it the wolves?

In the dusk of pines where night dissolves

To streamers and stars through the mountain gorge, I heard the blast of a giant forge.

Then I knew the wind was awake from the North, And the ocean riders were freed and forth.

Time, there is time (now gallop, my heart!) Ere the black riders disperse and depart.

The dawn is late, but the dawn comes round, And Fleetfoot Jean has the wind of a hound.

The hue and cry of the Kelpie horde Was growing and grim on that white seaboard.

It rolled and gathered and died and grew Far off to the rear; a smile thereto

I turned; a fathom behind my ear A rider rode with a shadowy leer.

I sickened and sped. He laughed aloud, "Wind for a mourner, snow for a shroud!"

On and on, half blown, half blind, Shadow and self, and the wind behind!

I slackened, he slackened; I fled, he flew; In a swirl of snow-drift all night through

I scoured along the gusty fen, A quarry for hunting Kelpie men.

But only one could hold at my side: "Brother, brother, I love thy stride.

"Wilt thou follow thy whim to win My merry maid of the goblin kin?"

I swerved from my trail, for he haunted my ear With his moaning jibe and his shadowy leer.

So by good hap as we sped it fell, I fetched a circuit back for the well.

Like a spilth of spume on the crest of the bore When the combing tides make in for sh.o.r.e,

That runner ran whose love was a wraith; But the rider rode with revenge in his teeth.

Another league, and I touch the goal,-- The mystic rune on the poplar bole,--

When the dusky eyes and the raven hair And the lithe brown arms shall greet me there.

I ran like a harrier on the trace In the leash of that ghoul, and the wind gave chase.

A furlong now; I caught the gleam Of the bubbling well with its tiny stream;

An arrowy burst; I cleared the beck; And--the Kelpie rider bestrode my neck.

Dawn, the still red winter dawn; I awoke on the plain; the wind was gone;--

All gracious and good as when G.o.d made The living creatures, and none was afraid.

I stooped to drink of the wholesome spring Under the poplars whispering:

Face to my face in that water clear-- The Kelpie rider's jabbering leer!

Ah, G.o.d! not me: I was never so!

Sainted Louis, who can know

The lords of life from the slaves of death?

What help avail the speeding breath

Of the spirit that knows not self's abode,-- When the soul is lost that knows not G.o.d?

I turned me home by St. Louis' Hall, Where the red sun burns on the windows tall.

And I thought the world was strange and wild, And G.o.d with his altar only a child.

IV

Again one year in the prime of June, I came to the well in the heated noon,

Leaving Roch.e.l.le with its red roof tiles By the Pottery Gate before St. Giles,--

There where the flower market is, Where every morning up from Duprisse

The flower girls come by the long white lane That skirts the edge of Bareau plain;--

To the North, the city wall in the sun, To the left, the fen where the eye may run

And have its will of the blazing blue.

The while I loitered the market through,