Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/268

84 Lay as the slimy water of the troughs

When murrain thins the cattle of Er-Heb:

And through the mist men heard the Red Horse feed.

In Armod's house they burned Bisesa's dower,

And killed her black bull Tor, and broke her wheel,

And loosed her hair, as for the marriage-feast

With cries more loud than mourning for the dead.

Across the fields, from Armod's dwelling-place,

We heard Bisesa weeping where she passed

To seek the Unlighted Shrine; the Red Horse neighed

And followed her, and on the river-mint

His hooves struck dead and heavy in our ears.

Out of the mists of evening, as the star

Of Ao-Safai climbs through the black snow-blur

To show the Pass is clear, Bisesa stepped

Upon the great grey slope of mortised stone,

The Causeway of Taman. The Red Horse neighed

Behind her to the Unlighted Shrine—then fled

North to the Mountain where his stable lies.