"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.
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