Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/41

Dost thou bow in prayer, to the God who guides
    Thy course o'er such pavement frail?
Or nod in thy dream o'er the steep, where glides
The curdling brook, with its slippery tides,
    Thou horseman, so young and pale?

Swift, swift o'er the breast of the frozen streams,
    Toward Lyster-Church he hies—
Whose holy spire, 'mid the glaciers gleams,
    Like a star in troubled skies.

Now stay, thou ghostly traveller—stay
    Why haste in such mad career?
Be the guilt of thy bosom as dark as it may,
    'Twere better to purge it here.

On, on! like the winged blast he wends,
    Where moulder the bones of the dead—
Wilt thou stir the sleep of thy buried friends,
    With thy courser's tramping tread?

At a yawning pit, whose narrow brink,
    'Mid the swollen snow was grooved,
He paused. The steed from that chasm did shrink,
    But the rider sate unmoved.

Then down at once, from his lonely seat,
    They lifted that horseman pale,
And laid him low in the drear retreat
And poured in dirge-like measure sweet,
    The mournful funeral wail.