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(From Greenland)
’T IS sunset: to the firmament serene | |
| The Atlantic wave reflects a gorgeous scene; | |
| Broad in the cloudless west a belt of gold | |
| Girds the blue hemisphere; above, unrolled, | |
| The keen clear air grows palpable to sight, | 5 |
| Embodied in a flush of crimson light, | |
| Through which the evening star, with milder gleam, | |
| Descends, to meet her image in the stream. | |
| Far in the east, what spectacle unknown | |
| Allures the eye to gaze on it alone? | 10 |
| Amidst black rocks, that lift on either hand | |
| Their countless peaks, and mark receding land; | |
| Amidst a tortuous labyrinth of seas, | |
| That shine around the arctic Cyclades; | |
| Amidst a coast of dreariest continent, | 15 |
| In many a shapeless promontory rent; | |
| O’er rocks, seas, islands, promontories spread, | |
| The Ice-Blink rears its undulated head, | |
| On which the sun, beyond the horizon shrined, | |
| Hath left his richest garniture behind; | 20 |
| Piled on a hundred arches, ridge by ridge, | |
| O’er fixed and fluid, strides the Alpine bridge, | |
| Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye | |
| Hewn from cerulean quarries of the sky; | |
| With glacier-battlements, that crowd the spheres, | 25 |
| The slow creation of six thousand years, | |
| Amidst immensity it towers sublime,— | |
| Winter’s eternal palace, built by Time: | |
| All human structures by his touch are borne | |
| Down to the dust; mountains themselves are worn | 30 |
| With his light footsteps; here forever grows, | |
| Amid the region of unmelting snows, | |
| A monument, where every flake that falls | |
| Gives adamantine firmness to the walls. | |
| The sun beholds no mirror, in his race, | 35 |
| That shows a brighter image of his face; | |
| The stars, in their nocturnal vigils, rest | |
| Like signal-fires on its illumined crest; | |
| The gliding moon around the ramparts wheels, | |
| And all its magic lights and shades reveals; | 40 |
| Beneath, the tide with idle fury raves | |
| To undermine it through a thousand caves; | |
| Rent from its roof, though thundering fragments oft | |
| Plunge to the gulf; immovable aloft, | |
| From age to age, in air, o’er sea, on land, | 45 |
| Its turrets heighten, and its piers expand. | |
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| Midnight hath told his hour; the moon, yet young, | |
| Hangs in the argent west her bow unstrung; | |
| Larger and fairer, as her lustre fades, | |
| Sparkle the stars amidst the deepening shades: | 50 |
| Jewels, more rich than night’s regalia, gem | |
| The distant Ice-Blink’s spangled diadem; | |
| Like a new morn from orient darkness, there | |
| Phosphoric splendors kindle in mid-air, | |
| As though from heaven’s self-opening portals came | 55 |
| Legions of spirits in an orb of flame,— | |
| Flame, that from every point an arrow sends | |
| Far as the concave firmament extends: | |
| Spun with the tissue of a million lines, | |
| Glistening like gossamer the welkin shines: | 60 |
| The constellations in their pride look pale | |
| Through the quick-trembling brilliance of that veil. | |
| Then, suddenly converged, the meteors rush | |
| O’er the wide south; one deep vermilion blush | |
| O’erspreads Orion glaring on the flood, | 65 |
| And rabid Sirius foams through fire and blood; | |
| Again the circuit of the pole they range, | |
| Motion and figure every moment change, | |
| Through all the colors of the rainbow run, | |
| Or blaze like wrecks of a dissolving sun; | 70 |
| Wide ether burns with glory, conflict, flight, | |
| And the glad ocean dances in the light. | |
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