Windy Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson
Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?
Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.
The Rider by John Cowper Powys
On the horses of desire
Over the tossing trees
I have hunted the Pillar of Fire
To his inmost fastnesses.
On the eagles of despair
Where the thunders meet,
I have hunted the Powers of the Air
To their last retreat.
Over chasm and over crag
On the horned moon riding,
I have hunted the night-hag
To her furthest hiding.
On the lions of exultation
I ride to my doom!
No tears of human desolation
Shall find my tomb.
The Bright Rider by John Frederick Freeman
All the night through I drank
Sleep like water or cool cider;
Life flowed over and I sank
Down below the night of clouds….
Then on a pale horse was rider
Through long brushing woods
Where the owl in silence broods,
Quavers, and is quiet again;
Where the grass dark and rank
Breathes on the still air its rain.
Rain and dark and green and sound
Closing slowly round
Swept me as I rode,
And rode on until I came
Where a white cold river flowed
Under woods thin and bare
In the moon’s long candle flame.
Through the woods the wind crawled
Leviathan, and here and there
Branches creaked and old winds howled
Sick for home.
All the night I saw the river,
As a girl that sees beside her
Love, between fear and fear
Riding, and is dumb.
The white horse turned to cross the river,
But the waters like a wall
Rose and hung dark over all;
And as they fell the river wider
Wider grew, and sky was bare
Save of the sick candle’s stare.
Death the divider
Glittered cold and dark and deep
Under banks of fear.
But that rider
Trembling, bright, rode on,
Trembling and bright rode on
Through green lanes of sleep.
The Fair Little Maiden by Dora Sigerson Shorter
“There is one at the door, Wolfe O’Driscoll,
At the door, who bids you to come!”
“Who is he that wakes me in the darkness,
Calling when all the world is dumb?”
“Six horses has he to his carriage.
Six horses blacker than the night,
And their twelve red eyes in the shadows—
Twelve lamps he carries for his light;
“His coach is a herse black and mouldy,
Within a coffin open wide:
He asks for your soul, Wolfe O’Driscoll,
Who doth call at the door outside.”
“Who let him thro’ the gates of my gardens,
Where stronger bolts have never been?”
“The father of the fair little maiden
You drove to her grave deep and green.”
“And who let him pass through the courtyard.
Loosening the bar and the chain?”
“Who but the brother of the maiden
Who lies in the cold and the rain!”
“Then who drew the bolts at the portal
And into my house bade him go?”
“The mother of the poor young maiden
Who lies in her youth all so low.”
“Who stands, that he dare not enter.
The door of my chamber, between?”
“O, the ghost of the fair little maiden
Who lies in the churchyard green.”
The Dead Coach by Katharine Tynan Hinkson
At night when sick folk wakeful lie,
I heard the dead coach passing by,
And heard it passing wild and fleet,
And knew my time was come not yet.
Click-clack, click-clack, the hoofs went past,
Who takes the dead coach travels fast,
On and away through the wild night,
The dead must rest ere morning light.
If one might follow on its track
The coach and horses, midnight black,
Within should sit a shape of doom
That beckons one and all to come.
God pity them to-night who wait
To hear the dead coach at their gate,
And him who hears, though sense be dim,
The mournful dead coach stop for him.
He shall go down with a still face,
And mount the steps and take his place,
The door be shut, the order said!
How fast the pace is with the dead!
Click-clack, click-clack, the hour is chill,
The dead coach climbs the distant hill.
Now, God, the Father of us all,
Wipe Thou the widow’s tears that fall!
The Spectral Horseman by Percy Bysshe Shelley
What was the shriek that struck fancy’s ear
As it sate on the ruins of time that is past?
Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind,
And breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh.
It is the Benshie’s moan on the storm,
Or a shivering fiend that, thirsting for sin,
Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps,
Winged with the power of some ruthless king,
And sweeps o’er the breast of the prostrate plain.
It was not a fiend from the regions of hell
That poured its low moan on the stillness of night;
It was not a ghost of the guilty dead,
Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore;
But aye at the close of seven years’ end
That voice is mixed with the swell of the storm,
And aye at the close of seven years’ end,
A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill
Awakens and floats on the mist of the heath.
It is not the shade of a murdered man,
Who has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God,
And howls in the pause of the eddying storm.
This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill;
‘Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul.
‘Tis more frightful far than the deathdemon’s scream,
Or the laughter of fiends when they howl o’er the corpse
Of a man who has sold his soul to hell.
It tells the approach of a mystic form,
A white courser bears the shadowy sprite;
More thin they are than the mists of the mountain,
When the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless lake.
More pale his cheek than the snows of Nithona
When winter rides on the northern blast,
And howls in the midst of the leafless wood.
Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving,
And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen,
Still secure ‘mid the wildest war of the sky,
The phantom courser scours the waste,
And his rider howls in the thunder’s roar.
O’er him the fierce bolts of avenging heaven
Pause, as in fear, to strike his head.
The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure;
Yet the wildered peasant, that oft passes by,
With wonder beholds the blue flash through his form;
And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,
The startled passenger shudders to hear,
More distinct than the thunder’s wildest roar.
Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns
To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,
Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,
And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the demons;
Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs,
Though wildered by death, yet never to die!
Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares,
Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch
Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain;
Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead
In horror pause on the fitful gale.
They float on the swell of the eddying tempest,
And scared seek the caves of gigantic …
Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds
On the blast that sweeps the breast of the lake,
And mingles its swell with the moonlight air.
A Woman Driving by Thomas Hardy
How she held up the horses’ heads,
Firm-lipped, with steady rein,
Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,
Till all was safe again!
With form erect and keen contour
She passed against the sea,
And, dipping into the chine’s obscure,
Was seen no more by me.
To others she appeared anew
At times of dusky light,
But always, so they told, withdrew
From close and curious sight.
Some said her silent wheels would roll
Rutless on softest loam,
And even that her steeds’ footfall
Sank not upon the foam.
Where drives she now? It may be where
No mortal horses are,
But in a chariot of the air
Towards some radiant star.
Daniel Webster’s Horses by Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth
If when the wind blows
Rattling the trees,
Clicking like skeletons’
Elbows and knees,
You hear along the road
Three horses pass,
Do not go near the dark
Cold window-glass.
If when the first snow lies
Whiter than bones,
You see the mark of hoofs
Cut to the stones,
Hoofs of three horses
Going abreast—
Turn about, turn about,
A closed door is best!
Upright in the earth
Under the sod
They buried three horses,
Bridled and shod,
Daniel Webster’s horses—
He said as he grew old,
“Flesh, I loved riding,
Shall I not love it cold?
“Shall I not love to ride
Bone astride bone,
When the cold wind blows
And snow covers stone?
“Bury them on their feet,
With bridle and bit.
They were good horses.
See their shoes fit.”
The Headless Horseman by Madison Julius Cawein
On the black road through the wood
As I rode,
There the Headless Horseman stood;
By the wild pool in the wood,
As I rode.
From the shadow of an oak,
As I rode,
Demon steed and rider broke;
By the thunder-shattered oak,
As I rode.
On the waste road through the plain,
As I rode,
At my back he whirled like rain;
On the tempest-blackened plain,
As I rode.
Four fierce hoofs shod red with fire,
As I rode,
Woke the wild rocks, dark and dire;
Eyes and nostrils streamed with fire,
As I rode.
On the deep road through the rocks,
As I rode,
I could reach his horse’s locks;
Through the echo-hurling rocks,
As I rode.
And again I looked behind,
As I rode, –
Dark as night and swift as wind,
Towering, he rode behind,
As I rode.
On the steep road down the dell,
As I rode,
In the night I heard a bell,
In the village in the dell,
As I rode.
And my soul called out in prayer,
As I rode, –
Lo! the demon went in air,
Leaving me alone in prayer,
As I rode.
The Phantom Horsewoman by Thomas Hardy
I
Queer are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and stands
In a careworn craze,
And looks at the sands
And the seaward haze
With moveless hands
And face and gaze,
Then turns to go …
And what does he see when he gazes so?
II
They say he sees as an instant thing
More clear than to-day,
A sweet soft scene
That was once in play
By that briny green;
Yes, notes alway
Warm, real, and keen,
What his back years bring –
A phantom of his own figuring.
III
Of this vision of his they might say more:
Not only there
Does he see this sight,
But everywhere
In his brain – day, night,
As if on the air
It were drawn rose-bright –
Yea, far from that shore
Does he carry this vision of heretofore:
IV
A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,
He withers daily,
Time touches her not,
But she still rides gaily
In his rapt thought
On that shagged and shaly
Atlantic spot,
And as when first eyed
Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.
Darkling, I Listen 