While The Billy BoilsSearchWhen cohorts of SeptemberAre marching down amain,We waken and rememberOur fathers’ fields again.Old Winter’s ice-bonds slacken,His voice is waning low,And sunward peeps the brackenFrom winding sheets of snow.
The dumb earth wakes and shivers,Young winds our heralds are,And mortals call us riversWho know not what we are.Ere mastodon or urusMight dare the steamy rift,From Java to HondurasOur hoofs had scarred the drift.
Honduras east to JavaOur hieroglyphs were beatOn prehistoric lavaBy old silurian sleet.And seaward still our course isWhen Spring’s glad fanfare thrillsAnd wakes the wild white horses,The horses of the hills.
Our dams came south and nor’ward,Our dams came east and west,Hard driven is from shoreward,And laid them down to rest.With whips of storm behind themThey wheeled and whirled and broke,And fled by roads assigned them,Ere we in wonder woke.
In Winter’s cave we slumbered,Like sluggards in our chains,For days and nights unnumbered,Nor dreamed of our domains:But cohorts of SeptemberAre marching down amain;We waken and rememberOur father’s fields again.
Off cape and fretted forelandTen thousand hoofs a-drum,Our sires who hold the shoreland,The white sea stallions come.O’er drift and weed and spinneyInshore their leaders stampAnd wheel and snort and whinnyTo call us to their camp.
’Neath dawn or noontide splendourInborne on winds of dream,In vibrant tone and tenderWe hear the call supreme;High o’er the locked land forcesA clarion call it shrills —“Come home! come home, white horses!White horses of the hills!”
O! vain on back and shoulderHis harness Winter bound,And fenced with brake and boulderHis mountain stockyard round;Disdaining bond or shackle,With plunge and swerve and shy,We break from bar and tackleAnd thunder in reply.
Down thro’ the gorge’s shadowsOur rolling squadrons burst,Forth from the white snow meadowsWherein our strength was nursed.By hut and homestead swingingFull speed and flanks afoam,We hear the land wind singing“Come home! white steeds, come home!”
No rider sits astride us;No fences bid us stay;And none so bold as ride usCross country to the bay.Who track our trampled coursesBear witness to our wills,We are the wild white horses,The horses of the hills.