Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/157

 THE DEAD HORSEMAN. 141

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.

Bold youth ! whose bosom with pride had glowed

In a life of toil severe, Didst thou scorn to pass to thy last abode

In the ease of the slothful bier ?

Must thy own good steed, which thy hands had drest,

In the fulness of boyhood's bliss, By the load of thy lifeless limbs be prest,

On a journey so strange as this ?

Yet still to the depth of yon rock-barred dell,

Where no ray from heaven hath glowed, Where the thundering rush of the Markefoss fell, The trembling child doth point, and tell How that fearful horseman rode.

�� �