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(From Greenland)
STRANGE Isle! a moment to poetic gaze | |
| Rise in thy majesty of rocks and bays, | |
| Glens, fountains, caves that seem not things of earth, | |
| But the wild shapes of some prodigious birth; | |
| As if the kraken monarch of the sea, | 5 |
| Wallowing abroad in his immensity, | |
| By polar storms and lightning shafts assailed, | |
| Wedged with ice-mountains, here had fought and failed; | |
| Perished,—and in the petrifying blast, | |
| His hulk became an island rooted fast;— | 10 |
| Rather, from ocean’s dark foundation hurled, | |
| Thou art a type of his mysterious world, | |
| Buoyed on the desolate abyss, to show | |
| What wonders of creation hide below. | |
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| Here Hecla’s triple peaks, with meteor lights, | 15 |
| Nature’s own beacons, cheer hibernal nights: | |
| But when the orient flames in red array, | |
| Like ghosts the spectral splendors flee the day; | |
| Morn at her feet beholds supinely spread | |
| The carcass of the old Chimera dead, | 20 |
| That wont to vomit flames and molten ore, | |
| Now cleft asunder to the inmost core; | |
| In smouldering heaps, wide wrecks and cinders strown, | |
| Lie like the walls of Sodom overthrown | |
| (Ere from the face of blushing Nature swept, | 25 |
| And where the city stood the Dead Sea slept); | |
| While inaccessible, tradition feigns, | |
| To human foot the guarded top remains, | |
| Where birds of hideous shape and doleful note, | |
| Fate’s ministers, in livid vapors float. | 30 |
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| Far off, amidst the placid sunshine, glow | |
| Mountains with hearts of fire and crests of snow, | |
| Whose blackened slopes with deep ravines entrenched, | |
| Their thunders silenced, and their lightnings quenched, | |
| Still the slow heat of spent eruptions breathe, | 35 |
| While embryo earthquakes swell their wombs beneath. | |
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| Hark! from yon caldron cave, the battle-sound | |
| Of fire and water warring under ground: | |
| Racked on the wheels of an ebullient tide, | |
| Here might some spirit, fallen from bliss, abide,— | 40 |
| Such fitful wailings of intense despair, | |
| Such emanating splendors, fill the air. | |
| He comes, he comes; the infuriate Geyser springs | |
| Up to the firmament on vapory wings; | |
| With breathless awe the mounting glory view; | 45 |
| White whirling clouds his steep ascent pursue. | |
| But lo! a glimpse;—refulgent to the gale, | |
| He starts all naked through his riven veil; | |
| A fountain-column, terrible and bright, | |
| A living, breathing, moving form of light: | 50 |
| From central earth to heaven’s meridian thrown, | |
| The mighty apparition towers alone, | |
| Rising, as though forever he could rise, | |
| Storm and resume his palace in the skies, | |
| All foam and turbulence and wrath below; | 55 |
| Around him beams the reconciling bow | |
| (Signal of peace, whose radiant girdle binds, | |
| Till nature’s doom, the waters and the winds); | |
| While mist and spray, condensed to sudden dews, | |
| The air illumine with celestial hues, | 60 |
| As if the bounteous sun were raining down | |
| The richest gems of his imperial crown. | |
| In vain the spirit wrestles to break free, | |
| Foot-bound to fathomless captivity; | |
| A power unseen, by sympathetic spell | 65 |
| Forever working, to his flinty cell | |
| Recalls him from the ramparts of the spheres: | |
| He yields, collapses, lessens, disappears; | |
| Darkness receives him in her vague abyss, | |
| Around whose verge light froth and bubbles hiss, | 70 |
| While the low murmurs of the refluent tide | |
| Far into subterranean silence glide, | |
| The eye still gazing down the dread profound, | |
| When the bent ear hath wholly lost the sound. | |
| But is he slain and sepulchred? Again | 75 |
| The deathless giant sallies from his den, | |
| Scales with recruited strength the ethereal walls, | |
| Struggles afresh for liberty,—and falls. | |
| Yes, and for liberty the fight renewed, | |
| By day, by night, undaunted, unsubdued, | 80 |
| He shall maintain, till Iceland’s solid base | |
| Fail, and the mountains vanish from its face. | |
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| And can these fail? Of Alpine height and mould | |
| Schapta’s unshaken battlements behold; | |
| His throne an hundred hills; his sun-crowned head | 85 |
| Resting on clouds; his robe of shadow spread | |
| O’er half the isle; he pours from either hand | |
| An unexhausted river through the land, | |
| On whose fair banks, through valleys warm and green, | |
| Cattle and flocks and homes and spires are seen. | 90 |
| Here Nature’s earthquake-pangs were never felt; | |
| Here in repose hath man for ages dwelt: | |
| The everlasting mountain seems to say, | |
| “I am,—and I shall never pass away.” | |
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| Yet fifty winters, and, with huge uproar, | 95 |
| Thy pride shall perish;—them shalt be no more! | |
| Amidst chaotic ruins on the plain, | |
| Those cliffs, these waters, shall be sought in vain! | |
| Through the dim vista of unfolding years, | |
| A pageant of portentous woe appears. | 100 |
| Yon rosy groups, with golden locks, at play, | |
| I see them,—few, decrepit, silent, gray; | |
| Their fathers all at rest beneath the sod, | |
| Whose flowerless verdure marks the House of God, | |
| Home of the living and the dead;—where meet | 105 |
| Kindred and strangers, in communion sweet, | |
| When dawns the Sabbath on the block-built pile; | |
| The kiss of peace, the welcome, and the smile | |
| Go round; till comes the priest, a father there, | |
| And the bell knolls his family to prayer: | 110 |
| Angels might stoop from thrones in heaven, to be | |
| Co-worshippers in such a family, | |
| Whom from their nooks and dells, where’er they roam, | |
| The Sabbath gathers to their common home. | |
| O, I would stand a keeper at this gate | 115 |
| Rather than reign with kings in guilty state; | |
| A day in such serene enjoyment spent | |
| Were worth an age of splendid discontent! | |
| —But whither am I hurried from my theme? | |
| Schapta returns on the prophetic dream. | 120 |
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| From eve till morn strange meteors streak the pole; | |
| At cloudless noon mysterious thunders roll, | |
| As if below both shore and ocean hurled | |
| From deep convulsions of the nether world: | |
| Anon the river, boiling from its bed, | 125 |
| Shall leap its bounds and o’er the lowlands spread, | |
| Then waste in exhalation, leaving void | |
| As its own channel, utterly destroyed, | |
| Fields, gardens, dwellings, churches, and their graves, | |
| All wrecked or disappearing with the waves. | 130 |
| The fugitives that ’scape this instant death | |
| Inhale slow pestilence with every breath; | |
| Mephitic steams from Schapta’s mouldering breast | |
| With livid horror shall the air infest; | |
| And day shall glare so foully on the sight, | 135 |
| Darkness were refuge from the curse of light. | |
| Lo! far among the glaciers, wrapt in gloom, | |
| The red precursors of approaching doom, | |
| Scattered and solitary founts of fire, | |
| Unlocked by hands invisible, aspire: | 140 |
| Erelong, more rapidly than eye can count, | |
| Above, beneath, they multiply, they mount, | |
| Converge, condense,—a crimson phalanx form, | |
| And rage aloft in one unbounded storm; | |
| From heaven’s red roof the fierce reflections throw | 145 |
| A sea of fluctuating light below. | |
| Now the whole army of destroyers, fleet | |
| As whirlwinds, terrible as lightnings, meet; | |
| The mountains melt like wax along their course, | |
| When, downward pouring with resistless force | 150 |
| Through the void channel where the river rolled, | |
| To ocean’s verge their flaming march they hold; | |
| While blocks of ice, and crags of granite rent, | |
| Half-fluid ore, and rugged minerals blent, | |
| Float on the gulf, till molten or immersed, | 155 |
| Or in explosive thunderbolts dispersed. | |
| Thus shall the Schapta, towering on the brink | |
| Of unknown jeopardy, in ruin sink; | |
| And, this wild paroxysm of frenzy past, | |
| At her own work shall Nature stand aghast. | 160 |
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