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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.

Danish America: Greenland

Greenland

By William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850)

(From The Spirit of Discovery)

LET Greenland’s snows

Then shine, and mark the melancholy train

There left to perish, whilst the cold pale day

Declines along the further ice, that binds

The ship, and leaves in night the sinking scene.

Sad winter closes on the deep; the smoke

Of frost, that late amusive to the eye

Rose o’er the coast, is passed, and all is now

One torpid blank; the freezing particles

Blown blistering, and the white bear seeks her cave.

Ill-fated outcasts, when the morn again

Shall streak with feeble beam the frozen waste,

Your air-bleached and unburied carcasses

Shall press the ground, and, as the stars fade off,

Your stony eyes glare mid the desert snows!