Look to your van a league away,—

What midnight terror stays

The bulk that checks against the spray
Her crackling tops ablaze?

Hit, and hard hit! The blow went home,
The muffled, knocking stroke-
The steam that overruns the foam-

The foam that thins to smoke

The smoke that clokes the deep aboil-
The deep that chokes her throes

Till, streaked with ash and sleeked with oil,
The lukewarm whirlpools close!

A shadow down the sickened wave
Long since her slayer fled:

But hear their chattering quick-fires rave
Astern, abeam, ahead!

Panic that shells the drifting spar

Loud waste with none to checkMad fear that rakes a scornful star Or sweeps a consort's deck!

Now, while their silly smoke hangs thick,
Now ere their wits they find,

Lay in and lance them to the quick-
Our gallied whales are blind!
Good luck to those that see the end,

Good-bye to those that drown

For each his chance as chance shall sendAnd God for all! Shut down!

The strength of twice three thousand horse
That serve the one command;
The hand that heaves the headlong force,
The hate that backs the hand:
The doom-bolt in the darkness freed,

The mine that splits the main;

The white-hot wake, the 'wildering speedThe Choosers of the Slain!

WHITE HORSES

Where run your colts at pasture?
Where hide your mares to breed?
'Mid bergs about the Ice-cap

Or wove Sargasso weed;
By chartless reef and channel,
Or crafty coastwise bars,
But most the ocean-meadows
All purple to the stars!

Who holds the rein upon you?
The latest gale let free.
What meat is in your mangers ?
The glut of all the sea.

'Twixt tide and tide's returning

Great store of newly dead,

The bones of those that faced us,

And the hearts of those that fled.

That spy upon our matings,

That rope us where we run

They know the strong White Horses From father unto son.

We breathe about their cradles,
We race their babes ashore,
We snuff against their thresholds,
We nuzzle at their door;
By day with stamping squadrons,
By night in whinnying droves,
Creep up the wise White Horses,
To call them from their loves.

And come they for your calling?
No wit of man may save.

They hear the loosed White Horses
Above their father's grave;
And, kin of those we crippled,
And, sons of those we slew,
Spur down the wild white riders

To school the herds anew.