Line 662:  Who rides so late in the night and the wind

This line, and indeed the whole passage (lines 653-664), allude to the well-known poem by Goethe about the erlking, hoary enchanter of the elf-haunted alderwood, who falls in love with the delicate little boy of a belated traveler.  One cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious way in which Shade manages to transfer something of the broken rhythm of the ballad (a trisyllabic meter at heart) into his iambic verse:

                       /            /                /                   /

662          Who rides so late in the night and the wind

663          . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

                 /             /         /          /

664               . . . .It is the father with his child

Goethe’s two lines opening the poem come out must exactly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French:  vent-enfant), in my own language:

                   /                /         /         /

Ret woren ok spoz on natt ut vett?  

           /            /               /         /

Eto est votchez ut mid ik dett

Another fabulous ruler, the last king of Zembla, kept repeating these haunting lines to himself both in Zemblan and German, as a chance accompaniment of drumming fatigue and anxiety, while he climbed through the bracken belt of the dark mountains he had to traverse in his bid for freedom.