University of Virginia Library

THE ICE-BOUND SHIP

Various and manifold as they are vast
The glories whereunto men bend the knee,
And an exceeding glory is for thee;
Triumphant quietude of soul thou hast.
When now far futures shall lie in the past,
Thine, O my kinsman, partly thine shall be
Colossal epic of the frozen sea,
Pindaric passionate of the Northern blast.
O strongholds of the winter wild and lone,
O Balaklavas of the rolling ice,
O struggles on the sledge or in the yards,
Ye tell our England that of many a son
Like thee are borne victorious agonies
Magnificent as charges of the Guards.

I

Strike, strike the golden lyre,
Sound forth the measured praise of something higher
Than fair adventures be or battle's breath of fire—
Not tales that burn or thrill
So much as the unconquerable will,
The patience better than heroic pride.
Wherever this doth yet abide,
There is the making of a martyr still;
There is the gentleness that alone is great,
There is the purity inviolate,
There are the noble noiseless things
Whose genuine glory shall see out
The roses and the palms of emperors and kings.
Not with a battle-kindling fire,
Not to keep tune with war's sonorous shout,
Strike strike the golden lyre!

II

Nor let there want
Aught of a human pathos for the chant.
The heart is long in breaking,
The eye is long in weeping,
The strong man long in dying.
Never a flag is flying,
Never a pulse is leaping,
Never a sailor waking,
Never a moving hand
Within that dreadful land.
His sail is frozen to the mast.
He waits the world out aye in the glory white and vast.
The woman's heart at home is slow in breaking,
The woman's hair from day to day
Is slow in fading into gray.
Long, but at last the hope is dead;
Slow, but at last the last year comes for taking
The latest thin and silver thread.
Wherefore as ages come and go,
Lest other chronicles be lost
In that interminable frost,
In that eternal snow,
Strike, strike the golden lyre!

III

Strike then, and as thou strikest proclaim
An unimaginable fame
For those who wrought
A Waterloo without a wound,
A Trafalgar with no triumphant sound.
A strain be sought
Suiting the wondrous lights
Of all the starry Arctic nights,
Simple as was their faith
Yet rising mountainously high
In its sublime simplicity.
In the default of war, their death
Was something that was higher,—
Strike, strike the golden lyre!

IV

How shall we bury him?
Where shall we leave the old man lying?
With music in the distance dying—dying
Among the arches of the Abbey grand and dim;
There, if we might, we would bury him;
And comrades of the sea should bear his pall;
And the great organ should let rise and fall
The requiem of Mozart, the ‘Dead March’ in Saul.
Then, silence all!
And yet far grandlier will we bury him.
Strike the ship-bell slowly—slowly—slowly!
Sailors! trail the colours half-mast high;
Leave him in the face of God most holy,
Underneath the vault of Arctic sky.
Let the long, long darkness wrap him round,
By the long sunlight be his forehead crown'd.
For cathedral panes ablaze with stories,
For the tapers in the nave and choir,
Give him lights auroral—gird with glories
Mingled of the rose, and of the fire.
Let the wild winds like chief mourners walk,
Let the stars burn o'er his catafalque.

V