My glad feet shod with the glittering steel <br />I was the god of the wingèd heel. <br /> <br />The hills in the far white sky were lost; <br />The world lay still in the wide white frost; <br /> <br />And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream <br />By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream. <br /> <br />Here was a pathway, smooth like glass, <br />Where I and the wandering wind might pass <br /> <br />To the far-off palaces, drifted deep, <br />Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep. <br /> <br />I followed the lure, I fled like a bird, <br />Till the startled hollows awoke and heard <br /> <br />A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang, <br />As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang; <br /> <br />And the wandering wind was left behind <br />As faster, faster I followed my mind; <br /> <br />Till the blood sang high in my eager brain, <br />And the joy of my flight was almost pain. <br /> <br />The I stayed the rush of my eager speed <br />And silently went as a drifting seed, -- <br /> <br />Slowly, furtively, till my eyes <br />Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise, <br /> <br />And the hair of my neck began to creep <br />At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep. <br /> <br />Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near. <br />In the deep of my heart I heard my fear. <br /> <br />And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued, <br />From the white, inviolate solitude.<br /><br />Sir Charles GD Roberts<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-skater-3/
