Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Fancy: III. Mythical: Mystical: Legendary

The Walker of the Snow

Charles Dawson Shanly (1811–1875)

SPEED on, speed on, good Master!

The camp lies far away;

We must cross the haunted valley

Before the close of day.

How the snow-blight came upon me

I will tell you as I go,—

The blight of the Shadow-hunter

Who walks the midnight snow.

To the cold December heaven

Came the pale moon and the stars,

As the yellow sun was sinking

Behind the purple bars.

The snow was deeply drifted

Upon the ridges drear,

That lay for miles around me

And the camps for which we steer.

’T was silent on the hill-side,

And by the solemn wood,

No sound of life or motion

To break the solitude,

Save the wailing of the moose-bird

With a plaintive note and low,

And the skating of the red leaf

Upon the frozen snow.

And said I, “Though dark is falling,

And far the camp must be,

Yet my heart it would be lightsome

If I had but company.”

And then I sang and shouted,

Keeping measure, as I sped,

To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe

As it sprang beneath my tread.

Nor far into the valley

Had I dipped upon my way,

When a dusky figure joined me,

In a capuchon of gray,

Bending upon the snow-shoes,

With a long and limber stride;

And I hailed the dusky stranger

As we travelled side by side.

But no token of communion

Gave he by word or look,

And the fear-chill fell upon me,

At the crossing of the brook.

For I saw by the sickly moonlight

As I followed, bending low,

That the walking of the stranger

Left no footmarks on the snow.

Then the fear-chill gathered o’er me,

Like a shroud around me cast,

As I sank upon the snow-drift

Where the Shadow-hunter passed.

And the other trappers found me,

Before the break of day,

With my dark hair blanched and whitened

As the snow in which I lay.

But they spoke not as they raised me;

For they knew that in the night

I had seen the Shadow-hunter

And had withered in his blight.

Sancta Maria speed us!

The sun is falling low,

Before us lies the valley,

Of the Walker of the Snow!