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(From Ranolf and Amohia)
ST. LAWRENCE! yes, I well remember | |
| Thy Gulf,—that morning in September. | |
| Fast flew our ship careering lightly | |
| Over the waters breaking brightly; | |
| Alongside close as if their aim | 5 |
| Were but her vaunted speed to shame, | |
| Sleek porpoises like lightning went | |
| Cleaving the sunny element; | |
| Now where the black bows smote their way | |
| How would they revel in the roaring spray! | 10 |
| Like victors in the contest now | |
| Dash swift athwart the flying prow; | |
| Or springing forward three abreast | |
| Shoot slippery o’er each foamy crest,— | |
| Shoot upwards in an airy arc | 15 |
| As three abreast they passed the bark: | |
| Pied petrels coursed about the sea | |
| And skimmed the billows dexterously; | |
| Sank with each hollow, rose with every hill, | |
| So close, yet never touched them till | 20 |
| They seized their prey with rapid bill: | |
| Afar, the cloudy spurts of spray | |
| Told that the grampus sported there | |
| With his ferocious mates at play. | |
| Meanwhile the breeze that freshly blew | 25 |
| From every breaking wave-top drew | |
| A plume of smoke that straightway from the sun | |
| The colors of the rainbow won, | |
| So that you saw, wherever turning, | |
| A thousand small volcanoes burning, | 30 |
| Emitting vapors of each hue | |
| Of orange, purple, red, and blue. | |
| The sky meanwhile was all alive | |
| With snow-bright clouds that seemed to drive | |
| Swiftly, as though the heavens in glee | 35 |
| Were racing with the racing sea; | |
| Each flitting sight and rushing sound | |
| Spread life and hope and joy around; | |
| Ship, birds and fishes, sky and ocean, | |
| All restless with one glad emotion! | 40 |
| But what a change! when suddenly we spy | |
| Apart from all that headlong revelry,— | |
| Pencilled above the sky-line, like a spectre drear, | |
| A silent iceberg solemnly appear,— | |
| Pausing ghost-like our greeting to await. | 45 |
| The crystal mountain, as we come anear | |
| And feel the airs that from it creep | |
| So chilling o’er the sunny deep, | |
| Discloses, while it slowly shifts, | |
| Now blue, faint-glistening, semi-lucent clifts, | 50 |
| Now melancholy peaks, dead-white and desolate. | |
| But comes it not, this guest unbidden, | |
| This wanderer from a home far-hidden, | |
| Dim herald of the mysteries of the Pole, | |
| With tidings from that cheerless region fraught,— | 55 |
| Comes it not o’er us like the sudden thought, | |
| The haunting phantom of a world apart, | |
| The blank and silent apparition | |
| That, ever prompt to gain serene admission, | |
| Lurks on the crowded confines of the heart, | 60 |
| The many-pictured purlieus of the soul; | |
| Nay, sometimes thrusts its unexpected presence | |
| Upon our brightest-tinted hours of pleasaunce? * * * * * | |
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