The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan :: :: University of Virginia Library

And so those twain have passed across the night,
O'er frozen wilds of white,
With eyes still fixed upon the polar star
That burneth bright afar;
And Death behind them, creeping like a hound,
Still follows with no sound.

O wonders of the cold untravell'd Waste
Whereon their swift feet haste!
The night is troubled; on the black pole's pyres
Flash fierce electric fires,
And shadows come and go, phantoms move forth
Gigantic in the north.
Upon the snow a green light glimmereth,
With phosphorescent breath
Flashing and fading; and from unseen lairs
Creep hoary ghost-like bears,
Crawling across their path without a cry.

At last against the sky
They see the lonely arctic mountains loom,
Touch'd with a violet bloom
From peak to base and wearing on their heights
Strange ever-shifting lights,
Yellow and azure and dark amethyst;
But westward they are kissed
By the bright beams of a great moon of gold.
Dead-white and calm and cold
Sleeps the great waste, while ever as they go,
With shadows on the snow.
Their shapes grow luminous and silvern fair,
And in the hush'd chill air
The stars of heaven cluster with quick breath
To gaze on them and Death.
Now thro' the trembling sheen of the still sky
Blue fires and emerald fly
With wan reflections on the sheeted white
Outspread beneath the night,
And passing thro' them, Christ and Balder seem
As spectres in a dream,
Until at last their feet come silently
To the great arctic sea.

Moveless and boundless, stretching blindly forth
Into the purple north,
Rise mountainous waves and billows frozen all
As if i' the act to fall,
And tho' they stir not, yet they seem to roll
In silence to the pole.
So, lit by countless stars, that Ocean old
Wrapt in the vapours cold
Of its own breath, beneath the lamps of night
Gleams blue and shadowy white!
Then Balder crieth,—and around his brow
New glory glimmereth now,—
‘Ay me, remote from men are the abodes
Of the immortal gods;
Beyond the ocean of the ice; afar
Under the sleepless star;
And o'er the flood of the wild waters spanned.
From lonely land to land,
By the great bridge of the eternal Bow.’

The white Christ answereth low,
‘Tho' it were further than the furthest light
That glimmereth this night,
Thither our souls are bound, our feet must go!’