"Ride, for the wind is awake and away.
Sleep, for the harvest grain is gray."
No word more. And many a mile,
A ghostly bivouac rank and file,
They sleep to-day on the marshes wide;
Some far night they will wake and ride.
Once they were riders hot with speed,
"Kelpie, Kelpie, gallop at need!"
With hills of the barren sea to roam,
Housing their horses on the foam.
But earth is cool and the hush is long
Beneath the lull of the slumber song
The crickets falter and strive to tell
To the dragon-fly of the crystal well;
And love is a forgotten jest,
Where the Kelpie riders take their rest,
And blossoming grasses hour by hour
Burn in the bud and freeze in the flower.
But never again shall their roving be
On the shifting hills of the tumbling sea,
With the salt, and the rain, and the glad desire
Strong as the wind and pure as fire.
II
One doomful night in the April tide
With riot of brooks on the mountain side,
The goblin maidens of the hills
Went forth to the revel-call of the rills.
Many as leaves of the falling year,
To the swing of a ballad wild and clear
They held the plain and the uplands high;
And the merry-dancers held the sky.
The Kelpie riders abroad on the sea
Caught sound of that call of eerie glee,
Over their prairie waste and wan;
And the goblin maidens tolled them on.
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