My glad feet shod with the glittering steel <br /> I was the god of the wingèd heel. <br /> The hills in the far white sky were lost; <br /> The world lay still in the wide white frost; <br /> And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream <br /> By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream. <br /> Here was a pathway, smooth like glass, <br /> Where I and the wandering wind might pass <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 George Douglas Roberts<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-skater/
