My glad feet shod with the glittering steel 
 I was the god of the wingèd heel. 
 The hills in the far white sky were lost; 
 The world lay still in the wide white frost; 
 And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream 
 By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream. 
 Here was a pathway, smooth like glass, 
 Where I and the wandering wind might pass 
 To the far-off palaces, drifted deep, 
 Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep. 

 I followed the lure, I fled like a bird, 
 Till the startled hollows awoke and heard 

 A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang, 
 As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang; 

 And the wandering wind was left behind 
 As faster, faster I followed my mind; 

 Till the blood sang high in my eager brain, 
 And the joy of my flight was almost pain. 

 The I stayed the rush of my eager speed
 And silently went as a drifting seed, --

 Slowly, furtively, till my eyes
 Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,

 And the hair of my neck began to creep
 At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.

 Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.
 In the deep of my heart I heard my fear.

 And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,
 From the white, inviolate solitude.