The Skater

The Skater

Original Text
Selected Poems of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (Toronto: Ryerson, 1936): 44-45. PS 8485 O22A17 Robarts Library.
1My glad feet shod with the glittering steel
2I was the god of the wingèd heel.
3The hills in the far white sky were lost;
4The world lay still in the wide white frost;
5And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream
6By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.
7Here was a pathway, smooth like glass,
8Where I and the wandering wind might pass
9To the far-off palaces, drifted deep,
10Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep.
11I followed the lure, I fled like a bird,
12Till the startled hollows awoke and heard
13A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang,
14As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang;
15And the wandering wind was left behind
16As faster, faster I followed my mind;
17Till the blood sang high in my eager brain,
18And the joy of my flight was almost pain.
19The I stayed the rush of my eager speed
20And silently went as a drifting seed, --
21Slowly, furtively, till my eyes
22Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,
23And the hair of my neck began to creep
24At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.
25Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.
26In the deep of my heart I heard my fear.
27And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,
28From the white, inviolate solitude.
Publication Start Year
1901
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Form