The crickets falter and strive to tell
    To the dragon-fly of the crystal well;

    And love is a forgotten jest,
    Where the Kelpie riders take their rest,

    And blossoming grasses hour by hour
    Burn in the bud and freeze in the flower.

    But never again shall their roving be
    On the shifting hills of the tumbling sea,

    With the salt, and the rain, and the glad desire
    Strong as the wind and pure as fire.

II

    One doomful night in the April tide
    With riot of brooks on the mountain side,

    The goblin maidens of the hills
    Went forth to the revel-call of the rills.

    Many as leaves of the falling year,
    To the swing of a ballad wild and clear

    They held the plain and the uplands high;
    And the merry-dancers held the sky.

    The Kelpie riders abroad on the sea
    Caught sound of that call of eerie glee,

    Over their prairie waste and wan;
    And the goblin maidens tolled them on.

    The yellow eyes and the raven hair
    And the tawny arms blown fresh and bare,

    Were more than a mortal might behold
    And live with the saints for a crown of gold.

    The Kelpie riders were stricken sore;
    They wavered, and wheeled, and rode for the shore.

    “Kelpie, Kelpie, treble your stride! 
    Never again on the sea we ride.

    “Kelpie, Kelpie, out of the storm;
    On, for the fields of earth are warm!”

    Knee to knee they are riding in: 
    “Brother, brother,—­the goblin kin!”

    The meadows rocked as they clomb the scaur;
    The pines re-echo for evermore

    The sound of the host of Kelpie men;
    But the windflowers died on Bareau Fen.

    Over the marshes all night long
    The stars went round to a riding song: 

    “Kelpie, Kelpie, carry us through!”
    And the goblin maidens danced thereto.

    Till dawn,—­and the revel died with a shout,
    For the ocean riders were wearied out.

    They looked, and the grass was warm and soft;
    The dreamy clouds went over aloft;

    A gloom of pines on the weather verge
    Had the lulling sound of their own white surge;

    A whip-poor-will, far from their din,
    Was saying his litanies therein.

    Then voices neither loud nor deep: 
    “Tired, so tired; sleep! ah, sleep!

    “The stars are calm, and the earth is warm,
    But the sea for an earldom is given to storm.

    “Come now, inherit the houses of doom;
    Your fields of the sun shall be harried of gloom.”

    They laid them down; but over long
    They rest,—­for the goblin maids are strong.