White Horses

  _Where run your colts at pasture?
    Where hide your mares to breed?_
  ’Mid bergs about the Ice-cap
    Or wove Sargasso weed;
  By chartless reef and channel,
    Or crafty coastwise bars,
  But most the ocean-meadows
    All purple to the stars!

  _Who holds the rein upon you?_
    The latest gale let free.
  _What meat is in your mangers?_
    The glut of all the sea.
  ’Twixt tide and tide’s returning
    Great store of newly dead,--
  The bones of those that faced us,
    And the hearts of those that fled.

  Afar, off-shore and single,
    Some stallion, rearing swift,
  Neighs hungry for new fodder,
    And calls us to the drift.
  Then down the cloven ridges--
    A million hooves unshod--
  Break forth the mad White Horses
    To seek their meat from God!

  Girth-deep in hissing water
    Our furious vanguard strains--
  Through mist of mighty tramplings
    Roll up the fore-blown manes--
  A hundred leagues to leeward,
    Ere yet the deep is stirred,
  The groaning rollers carry
    The coming of the herd!

  _Whose hand may grip your nostrils--
    Your forelock who may hold?_
  E’en they that use the broads with us--
    The riders bred and bold,
  That spy upon our matings,
    That rope us where we run--
  They know the strong White Horses
    From father unto son.

  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!