Page:Poems Sigourney 1827.pdf/72

God speed thee now, thou horseman bold!
    For the tempest awakes in wrath,
And thy stony eye is fix'd and cold
    As the glass of thine icy path.

Down, down the precipice wild he breaks,
    Where the foaming waters roar,
And his way up the cliff of the mountain takes,
    Where man never trod before.

No checking hand to the rein he lends
    On frost-clad summits sheen,
But ever and aye his head he bends
    As they plunge in some dark ravine.

Dost thou bow in thy 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 slippery brook with its curdling tides,
    Thou horseman, so young and pale?

Swift over the face of the frozen streams
    Toward Lyster Church he hies,
Whose holy spire mid the mountains, gleams
    Like a star in troubled skies.

Now stay! thou ghastly traveller, stay!
    Here pause in thy mad career,—
Be the guilt of thy bosom as dark as it may,
    Thou surely canst purge it here.

But on, like the winged blast, he wends,
    Where the bones of the dead are laid,—
Where the sigh of a mourning group ascends
    From the depth of that cypress shade.