Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Song of the North Wind

By James Benjamin Kenyon (1858–1924)

HARK to the voice of me!

Hear thou the singing

Of him who has never

Been paid for his song!

This is the choice of me,

Still to go ringing

The rhymes that forever

Are surly and strong.

Know’st thou the regions cold

Whence I have hasted?

Know’st thou the way I take

Over the earth?

Still stand the legends old—

Ice-kings unwasted—

Fending the frigid lake

Where I had birth.

Frost-banded fountains

Snow-fed from far peaks;

Firths of the polar sea

Rigid as stone;

Shag-bearded mountains;

Deeps that no star seeks;

Strange lights that solar be—

These I have known.

Men fear the breath of me;

Sorrow and anguish,

Famine and fever

Follow my path.

I am the death of thee;

I make thee languish;

Swiftly I sever

Love’s ties in my wrath.

Chains cannot hold me,

Gyves cannot bind me,

Bolts cannot lock me,

Floods cannot drown!

Fly—and I fold thee;

Hide—and I find thee;

Cry—and I mock thee;

Howling thee down!