| |
| A FEARLESS shape of brave device, | |
| Our vessel drives through mist and rain, | |
| Between the floating fleets of ice,— | |
| The navies of the northern main. | |
| |
| These arctic ventures, blindly hurled, | 5 |
| The proofs of Nature’s olden force,— | |
| Like fragments of a crystal world | |
| Long shattered from its skyey course. | |
| |
| These are the buccaneers that fright | |
| The middle sea with dream of wrecks, | 10 |
| And freeze the south-winds in their flight, | |
| And chain the Gulf Stream to their decks. | |
| |
| At every dragon prow and helm | |
| There stands some Viking as of yore; | |
| Grim heroes from the Boreal realm | 15 |
| Where Odin rules the spectral shore. | |
| |
| And oft beneath the sun or moon | |
| Their swift and eager falchions glow,— | |
| While, like a storm-vexed wind, the rune | |
| Comes chafing through some beard of snow. | 20 |
| |
| And when the far North flashes up | |
| With fires of mingled red and gold, | |
| They know that many a blazing cup | |
| Is brimming to the absent bold. | |
| |
| Up signal there, and let us hail | 25 |
| Yon looming phantom as we pass! | |
| Note all her fashion, hull, and sail, | |
| Within the compass of your glass. | |
| |
| See at her mast the steadfast glow | |
| Of that one star of Odin’s throne; | 30 |
| Up with our flag, and let us show | |
| The constellation on our own. | |
| |
| And speak her well; for she might say, | |
| If from her heart the words could thaw, | |
| Great news from some far frozen bay, | 35 |
| Or the remotest Esquimaux: | |
| |
| Might tell of channels yet untold, | |
| That sweep the pole from sea to sea; | |
| Of lands which God designs to hold | |
| A mighty people yet to be:— | 40 |
| |
| Of wonders which alone prevail | |
| Where day and darkness dimly meet; | |
| Of all which spreads the arctic sail; | |
| Of Franklin and his venturous fleet: | |
| |
| How haply, at some glorious goal | 45 |
| His anchor holds, his sails are furled; | |
| That Fame has named him on her scroll, | |
| “Columbus of the Polar World”; | |
| |
| Or how his ploughing barques wedge on | |
| Through splintering fields, with battered shares, | 50 |
| Lit only by that spectral dawn, | |
| The mask that mocking darkness wears; | |
| |
| Or how, o’er embers black and few, | |
| The last of shivered masts and spars, | |
| He sits amid his frozen crew | 55 |
| In council with the Norland stars. | |
| |
| No answer,—but the sullen flow | |
| Of ocean heaving long and vast; | |
| An argosy of ice and snow, | |
| The voiceless North swings proudly past. | 60 |
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