Some Poets Horses. 297 



To complete the majesty of deities, they rode or drove 

 horses. In primitive legend they go in pairs — the black 

 steed of Night with the grey of the Morning, the red horse 

 of Carnage and the white of Death. In the sunrise and the 

 sunset there gUtter the peacock-feathered manes of the 

 coursers of the sky. The spirit of the ^\^lirlwind sweeps 

 along charioted by a swarthy team. Thunder and Light- 

 ning, the terrific Dioscuri, ride in the heavens upon their 

 neighing, fire-breathing, stallions. The rain-god Indras 

 comes up drawn by the Rohits, "the brown ones;" the 

 Dawn has harnessed to her car three dappled greys. From 

 the stables of Asgard issue Hrimfaxe and Skimfaxe, the 

 steeds of Day and Night, just as from the stalls of Olympus 

 the Hours lead forth Xanthos '"the golden,'"' and Belios 

 *' the mottled," and Meranon's mother — " Tithonia conjux " 

 — springs fi-om bed to chariot, and, shaking their dewy 

 manes, Lampas and Phaethon whirl her upwards through the 

 reddening skies to awaken gods and men. 



The spirits are all mounted — " Heaven's cherubim, 

 horsed upon the sightless coursers of the air" — "night-roam- 

 ing ghosts, by saucer-eyeballs known" (Gay) — "the Kelpy 

 on its water-palfrey" (Wordsworth) — the angels of death, 

 whose " coal-black steeds wait for men " (Jean Ingelow) — 

 the fays of Collins on miik-white steeds, and of Shelley on 

 " the coursers pf the air," the elfin king of Leyden on his 

 coal-black horse that goes with noiseless hoofs. Ossian's 

 steeds — " bounding sons of the hill," like every other 

 animal in that tiresome imposture — are wTeaths of mist. 

 But more substantial, in their way, are the night-steeds of 

 the moon in Campbell, the " pale horses '* of famine, war, 

 and plague (Mallet), the white horse, splashed with blood, 

 which Anarchy rides in Shelley, and the "pale horse," 

 which is the steed of death in a score of poets. Coleridge 

 makes fun of it — 



