Joaquin Miller's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

His triple star led on and on,
Led up blue, bastioned Chilkoot Pass
To clouds, through clouds, above white clouds
That droop with snows like beaded strouds—
Above a world of gleaming glass,
Where loomed such cities of the skies
As only prophets look upon,
As only loving poets see,
With prophet ken of mystery.

II

What lone, white silence, left or right,
What whiteness, something more than white!
Such steel blue whiteness, van or rear—
Such silence as you could but hear
Above the sparkled, frosted rime,
As if the steely stars kept time
And sang their mystic, mighty rune—
. . . And oh, the icy, eerie moon!

III

What temples, towers, tombs of white,
White tombs, white tombstones, left and right,
That pushed the passing night aside
To ward where fallen stars had died—
To ward white tombs where dead stars lay—

White tombs more white, more bright than they;
White tombs high heaped white tombs upon—
White Ossa piled on Pelion!

IV

Pale, steel stars flashed, rose, fell again,
Then paused, leaned low, as pitying,
And leaning so they ceased to sing,
The while the moon, with mother care,
Slow rocked her silver rocking-chair.

V

Night here, mid-year, is as a span;
Thor comes, a gold-clad king of war,
Comes only as the great Thor can.
Thor storms the battlements and Thor,
Far leaping, clinging crowned upon,
Throws battle hammer forth and back
Until the walls blaze in his track
With sparks and it is sudden dawn—
Dawn, sudden, sparkling, as a gem—
A jeweled, frost-set diadem
Of diamond, ruby, radium.

VI

Two tallest, ice-tipt peaks take flame,
Take yellow flame, take crimson, pink,
Then, ere you yet have time to think,
Take hues that never yet had name.
Then turret, minaret, and tower,

As if to mark some mystic hour,
Or ancient, lost Masonic sign,
Take on a darkness like to night,
Deep night below the yellow light
That erstwhile seemed some snow-white tomb.
Then all is set in ghostly gloom,
As some dim-lighted, storied shrine—
As if the stars forget to stay
At court when comes the kingly day.

VII

And now the high-built shafts of brass,
Gate posts that guard the tomb-set pass,
Put off their crowns, rich robes, and all
Their sudden, splendid light let fall;
And tomb and minaret and tower
Again gleam as that midnight hour.
While day, as scorning still to wait,
Drives fiercely through the ice-built gate
That guards the Arctic's outer hem
Of white, high-built Jerusalem.

VIII

To see, to guess the great white throne,
Behold Alaska's ice-built steeps
Where everlasting silence keeps
And white death lives and lords alone:
Go see God's river born full grown—
The gold of this stream it is good:
Here grows the Ark's white gopher wood—
A wide, white land, unnamed, unknown,
A land of mystery and moan.

IX

Tall, trim, slim gopher trees incline,
A leaning, laden, helpless copse,
And moan and creak and intertwine
Their laden, twisted, tossing tops,
And moan all night and moan all day
With winds that walk these steeps alway.

X

The melancholy moose looks down,
A tattered Capuchin in brown,
A gaunt, ungainly, mateless monk,
An elephant without his trunk,
While far, against the gleaming blue,
High up a rock-topt ridge of snow,
Where scarce a dream would care to go,
Climb countless blue-clad caribou,
In endless line till lost to view.

XI

The rent ice surges, grinds and groans,
Then gorges, backs, and climbs the shore,
Then breaks with sudden rage and roar
And plunging, leaping, foams and moans
Swift down the surging, seething stream—
Mad hurdles of some monstrous dream.

XII

To see God's river born full grown,
To see him burst the womb of earth
And leap, a giant at his birth,

Through shoreless whiteness, with wild shout—
A shout so sharp, so cold, so dread
You see, feel, hear, his sheeted dead—
'Tis as to know, no longer doubt,
'Tis as to know the eld Unknown,
Aye, bow before the great white throne.

XIII

White-hooded nuns, steeps gleaming white,
Lean o'er his cradle, left and right,
And weep the while he moans and cries
And rends the earth with agonies;
High ice-heaved summits where no thing
Has yet set foot or flashed a wing—
Bare ice-built summits where the white
Wide world is but a sea of white—
White kneeling nuns that kneel and feed
The groaning ice god in his greed,
And feed, forever feed, man's soul.
The full-grown river bounds right on
From out his birthplace tow'rd the Pole;
He knows no limit, no control:
He scarce is here till he is gone—
This sudden, mad, ice-born Yukon.

XIV

Beyond white plunging Chilkoot Pass,
That trackless Pass of stately tombs,
Of midday glories, midnight glooms,
Of morn's great gate posts, girt in brass—
This courtier, born to nature's court,
This comrade, peer of peaks, still kept
Companion with the stars and leapt

And laughed, the gliding sea of glass
Beneath his feet in merry sport.

XV

Then mute red men, the quick canoe,
Then o'er the ice-born surge and on,
Till gleaming snows and steeps were gone,
Till wide, deep waters, swirling, blue,
Received the sudden, swift canoe,
That leapt and laughed and laughing flew.

XVI

Then tall, lean trees, girth scarce a span,
With moss-set, moss-hung banks of gold
Most rich in hue, more gorgeous than
Silk carpetings of Turkestan:
Deep yellow mosses, rich as gold,
More gorgeous than the eye of man
Hath seen save in this wonderland—
Then flashing, tumbling, headlong waves
Below white, ice-bound, ice-built shores—
The river swept a stream of white
Where basalt bluffs made day like night.
And then they heard no sound, the oars
Were idle, still as grassy graves.

XVII

And then the mad, tumultuous moon
Spilt silver seas to plunge upon,
Possessed the land, a sea of white.
That white moon rivaled the red dawn
And slew the very name of night,

And walked the grave of afternoon—
That vast, vehement, stark and moon!

XVIII

The wide, still waters, sedgy shore,
A lank, brown wolf, a hungry howl,
A lean and hungry midday moon;
And then again the red man's oar—
A wide-winged, mute, white Arctic owl,
A black, red-crested, screeching loon
That knew not night from middle noon,
Nor gold-robed sun from lean, lank moon—
That crazy, black, red-crested loon.

XIX

Swift narrows now, and now and then
A broken boat with drowning men;
The wide, still marshes, dank as death,
Where honked the wild goose long and loud
With unabated, angry breath.
Black swallows twittered in a cloud
Above the broad mosquito marsh,
The wild goose honked, forlorn and harsh;
Honked, fluttered, flew in warlike mood
Above her startled, myriad brood,
The while the melancholy moose,
As if to mock the honking goose,
Forsook his wall, plunged in the wave
And sank, as sinking in a grave,
Sank to his eyes, his great, sad eyes,
And watched, in wonder, mute surprise,
Watched broken barge and drowning men
Drift, swirl, then plunge the gorge again.

XX

Again that great white Arctic owl,
As pitying, it perched the bank
Where swirled a barge and swirling sank—
A drowned man swirling with white face
Low lifting from the swift whirlpool.
That distant, doleful, hilltop howl—
That screaming, crimson-crested fool!
And oh, that eerie, ice-made moon
That hung the cobalt tent of blue
And looked straight down, to look you through,
That dead man swirling in his place,
That honking, honking, huge gray goose,
That solitary, sad-eyed moose,
That owl, that wolf, that human loon,
And oh, that death's head, hideous moon!

XXI

And this the Yukon, night by night,
The yellow Yukon, day by day;
A land of death, vast, voiceless, white,
A graveyard locked in ice-set clay,
A graveyard to the Judgment Day.

XXII

On, on, the swirling pool was gone,
On, on, the boat swept on, swept on,
That moon was as a thousand moons!
Two dead men swirled, one swept, one sank—
Two wolves, two owls, two yelling loons!

And now three loons! How many moons?
How many white owls perch the shore?
Three lank, black wolves along the bank
That watch the drowned men swirl or sink!
Three screeching loons along the brink—
That moon disputing with the dawn
That dared the yellow, dread Yukon!

XXIII

And why so like some lorn graveyard
Where only owls and loons may say
And life goes by the other way?
Aye, why so hideous and so hard,
So deathly hard to look upon?
Because this cold, wild, dread Yukon,
Of gold-sown banks, of sea white waves,
Is but one land, one sea of graves.

XXIV

Behold where bones hang either bank!
Great tusks of beasts before the flood
That floated here and floating sank—
'Mid ice-locked walls and ice-hung steep,
With muck and stone and moss and mud,
Where only death and darkness keep!
Lo, this is death-land! Heap on heap,
By ice-strown strand or rock-built steep,
By moss-brown walls, gray, green or blue,
The Yukon cleaves a graveyard through!
Three thousand miles of tusk anad bone,
Strown here, strown there, all heedless strown,
All strown and sown just as they lay

That time the fearful deluge passed,
Safe locked in ices to the last,
Safe locked, as records laid away,
To wait, to wait, the Judgment Day.

XXV

He landed, pierced the ice-locked earth,
He burned it to the very bone—
Burned and laid bare the deep bedstone
Placed at the building, at the birth
Of morn, and here, there, everywhere,
Such bones of bison, mastodon!
Such tusky monsters without name!
Great ice-bound bones with flesh scarce gone,
So fresh the wild dogs nightly came
To fight about and feast upon.
And gold along the bedrock lay
So bounteous below the bones
Men barely need to turn the stones
To fill their skins, within the day,
With rich, red gold and go their way.

XXVI

“The gold of that place it is good.”
Lo, here God laid the Paradise!
Lo, here each witness of the flood,
Tight jailed in ice eternal, lies
To wait the bailiff's chorus call:
“Come into court, come one, come all!”
But why so cold, so deathly cold
The battered beasts, the scattered gold,
The pleasant trees of Paradise,
Deep locked in everlasting ice?

XXVII

Oyez! the red man's simple tale;
He says that once, o'er hill and vale,
Ripe fruits hung ready all the year;
That man knew neither frost nor fear,
That bison wallowed to the eyes
In grass, that palm trees brushed the skies
Where birds made music all day long.
That then a great chief shaped a spear
Bone-tipt and sharp and long and strong,
And made a deadly moon-shaped bow,
And then a flint-tipt arrow wrought.
Then cunning, snake-like, creeping low,
As creeps a cruel cat, he sought
And in sheer wantonness he shot
A large-eyed, trusting, silly roe.
And then, exultant, crazed, he slew
Ten bison, ten tame bear and, too,
A harmless, long-limbed, shambling moose;
That then the smell of blood let loose
The passions of all men and all
Uprose and slew, or great or small—
Uprose and slew till hot midday
All four-foot creatures in their way;
Then proud, defiant, every one,
Shook his red spear-point at the sun.

XXVIII

Then God said, through a mist of tears,
“What would ye, braves made mad with blood?”

And then they shook their bone-tipt spears
And cried, “The sun it is not good!
Too hot the sun, too long the day;
Break off and throw the end away!”

XXIX

Then God, most angered instantly,
Drew down the day from out the sky
And brake the day across his knee
And hurled the fragments hot and high
And far down till they fell upon
The bronzing waves of dread Yukon,
Nor spared the red men one dim ray
Of light to lead them on their way.

XXX

And then the red men filled the lands
With wailing for just one faint ray
Of light to guide them home that they
Might wash and cleanse their blood-red hands.

XXXI

But God said, “Yonder, far away
Down yon Yukon, your broken day!
Go gather it from out the night!
That fitful, fearful Northern Light,
Is all that ye shall ever know
To guide henceforth the way you go.

XXXII

“You shall not see my face again,
But you shall see cold death instead.
This land hath sinned, this land is dead;
You drenched your beauteous land in blood,
And now behold the wild, white rain
Shall fall until a drowning flood
Shall fill all things above, below,
To wash away the smell of blood,
And birds shall die and beasts be dumb,
When cold, the cold of death shall come
And weave a piteous shroud of snow,
In graveyard silence, ever so.”

XXXIII

The red men say that then the rain
Drowned all the fires of the world,
Then drowned the fires of the moon;
That then the sun came not again,
Save in the middle summer noon,
When hot, red lances they had hurled
Are hurled at them like fiery rain,
Till Yukon rages like a main.

XXXIV

With bated breath these skin-clad men
Tell why the big-nosed moose foreknew
The flood; how, bandy-legged, he flew
Far up high Saint Elias: how
Down in the slope of his left horn,
The raven rested, night and morn;

How, in the hollow of his right,
The dove-hued moose-bird nestled low
Until they touched the utmost height;
How dove and raven soon took flight
And winged them forth and far away;
But how the moose did stay and stay,
His great sad eyes all wet with tears,
And keep his steeps two thousand years.

XXXV

He heard the half nude red men say,
Close huddled to the flame at night,
How in the hollow of a palm
A woman and a water rat,
That dreadful, darkened, drowning day,
Crept close and nestled in their fright;
And how a bear, tame as a lamb,
Came to them in the tree and sat
The long, long drift-time to the sea,
The while the wooing water rat
Made love to her incessantly;
How then the bear became a priest
And married them at last; how then
To them was born the shortest, least
Of all the children of all men,
And yet most cunning and most brave
Of all who dare the bleak north wave.

XXXVI

What tales of tropic fruit! No tale
But of some soft, sweet, sensuous clime,
Of love and lovely maiden's trust—

Some peopled, pleasant, palm-hung vale
Of everlasting summer time—
And, then the deadly sin of lust;
Forbidden fruit, shame and disgust!

XXXVII

And whence the story of it all,
The palm land, love land and the fall?
Was't born of ages of desire
From such sad children of the snows
For something fairer, better, higher?
God knows, God knows, God only knows.
But I should say, hand laid to heart
And head made bare, as I would swear,
These piteous, sad-faced children there
Knew Eden, the expulsion, knew
The deluge, knew the deluge true!

XXXVIII

And what though this be surely so?
Just this: I know, as all men know,
As few before this surely knew—
Just this, and count it great or small,
The best of you or worst of you,
The Bible, lid to lid, is true!

CANTO II

I

The year waxed weary, gouty, old;
The crisp days dwindled to a span,
The dying year it fell as cold
As dead feet of a dying man.
The hard, long, weary work was done,
The dark, deep pits probed to the bone,
And each had just one tale to tell.
Ten thousand argonauts as one,
Agnostic, Christian, infidel,
All said, despite of creed or class,
All said as one, “As surely as
The Bible is, the deluge was,
Whate'er the curse, whate'er the cause!”

II

What merry men these miners were,
And mighty in their pent-up force!
They wrought for her, they fought for her,
For her alone, or night or day,
In tent or camp, their one discourse
The Love three thousand miles away,
The Love who waked to watch and pray.

III

Yet rude were they and brutal they,
Their love a blended love and lust,
Born of this later, loveless day;

You could but love them for their truth,
Their frankness and their fiery youth,
And yet turn from them in disgust,
To loathe, to pity, and mistrust.

IV

The Siege of Troy knew scarce such men,
Such hardy, daring men as they,
The coward had not voyaged then,
The weak had died upon the way.

V

They sang, they sang some like to this,
“I say risk all for one warm kiss;
I say 'twere better risk the fall,
Like Romeo, to venture all
And boldly climb to deadly bliss.”

VI

I like that savage, Sabine way;
What mighty minstrels came of it!
Their songs are ringing to this day,
The bravest ever sung or writ;
Their loves the love of Juliet,
Of Portia, Desdemona, yea,
The old true loves are living yet;
And we, we love, we weep, we sigh,
In love with loves that will not die.

VII

Then take her, lover, sword in hand,
Hot-blooded and red-handed, clasp
Her sudden, stormy, tall and grand,
And lift her in your iron grasp
And kiss her, kiss her till she cries
From keen, sweet, happy, killing pain.
Aye, kiss her till she seeming dies;
Aye, kiss her till she dies, and then,
Why kiss her back to life again!

VIII

I love all things that truly love,
I love the low-voiced cooing dove
In wooing time, he woos so true,
His soft notes fall so overfull
Of love they thrill me through and through.
But when the thunder-throated bull
Upheaves his head and shakes the air
With eloquence and battle's blare,
And roars and tears the earth to woo,
I like his warlike wooing too.

IX

Yet best to love that lover is
Who loves all things beneath the sun,
Then finds all fair things in just one,
And finds all fortune in one kiss.

X

How wisely born, how more than wise,
How wisely learned must be that soul
Who loves all earth, all Paradise,
All people, places, pole to pole,
Yet in one kiss includes the whole!

XI

Give me a lover ever bold,
A lover clean, keen, sword in hand,
Like to those white-plumed knights of old
Whose loves held honor in the land;
Those men with hot blood in their veins
And hot, swift, iron hand to kill—
Those women loving well the chains
That bound them fast against their will;
Yet loved and lived—are living still.

XII

Enough: the bronzed man launched his boat,
A faithful dwarf clutched at the oar,
And Boreas began to roar
As if to break his burly throat.

XIII

Down, down by basalt palisade,
Down, down by bleakest ice-piled isle!
The mute, dwarf water rat afraid?
The water rat it could but smile
To hear the cold, wild waters roar
Against his savage Arctic shore.

XIV

But now he listened, gave a shout,
A startled cry, akin to fear.
The hand of God had reached swift out
And locked, as in an iron vise,
The whole white world in blue-black ice,
And daylight scarce seemed living more.
The day, the year, the world, lay dead.
With star-tipt candles foot and head;
Great stars, that burn a whole half year,
Stood forth, five-horned, and near, so near!

XV

The ghost-white day scarce drew a breath,
The dying day shrank to a span;
There was no life save that of man
And woolly dogs—man, dogs, and death!
The sun, a mass of molten gold,
Surged feebly up, then sudden rolled
Right back as in a beaten track
And left the white world to the moon
And five-horned stars of gleaming gold;
Such stars as sang in silent rune—
And oh, the cold, such killing cold
As few have felt and none have told!

XVI

And now he knew the last dim light
Lay on yon ice-shaft, steep and far,
Where stood one bold, triumphant star,

And he would dare the gleaming height,
Would see the death-bed of the day,
Whatever fate might make of it.
A foolish thing, yet were it fit
That he who dared to love, to say,
To live, should look the last of Light
Full in the face, then go his way
All silent into lasting night
As he had left her, on her height?

XVII

He climbed, he climbed, he neared at last
The Golden Fleece of flitting Light!
When sudden as an eagle's flight—
An eagle frightened from its nest
That crowns the topmost, rock-reared crest—
It swooped, it drooped, it, dying, passed.

XVIII

As when some sunny, poppy day
The Mariposa scatters gold
The while he takes his happy flight,
Like star dust when the day is old,
So passed his Light and all was night.

XIX

Some star-like scattered flecks of gold
Flashed from the far and fading wings
That kept the sky, like living things—
Then oh, the cold, the cruel cold!

The light, the life of him had past,
The spirit of the day had fled;
The lover of God's first-born, Light,
Descended, mourning for his dead.
The last of light, the very last
He deemed that he should look upon
Until God's everlasting dawn
Beyond this dread half year of night
Had fled forever from his sight.

XX

'Twas death to go, thrice death to stay.
Turn back, go southward, seek the sun?
Yea, better die in search of light,
Die boldly, face set forth for day,
As many dauntless men have done,
Than wail at fate and house with night.

XXI

Some wolly dogs, a low, dwarf-chief—
His trained thews stood him now in stead—
Broad snow-shoes, skins, a laden sled.—
That moon was as a brazen thief
That dares to mock, laugh, and carouse!
It followed, followed everywhere;
He hid his face, that moon was there.
Such painful light, such piteous pain!
It broke into his very brain,
As breaks a burglar in a house.

XXII

Scarce seen, a change came, slow, so slow!
That moon sank slowly out of sight,
The lower world of gleaming white
Took on a somber band of woe,
A wall of umber 'round about,
So dim at first you could but doubt,
That change there was, day after day—
Nay, nay, not day, I can but say
Sleep after sleep, sleep after sleep—
That band grew darker, deep, more deep,
Until there girt a dense dark wall,
A low, black wall of ebon hue,
Oppressive, deathlike as a pall;
It walked with you, close compassed you,
While not one thread of light shot through.
Above the black a gird of brown
Soft blending into amber hue,
And then from out the cobalt blue
Great, massive, golden stars swung down
Like tow'rd lights of mountain town.

XXIII

At last the moon moved gaunt and slow,
Half veiled her hollow, hungry face
In amber, kept unsteady pace
High up her star-set wall of snow,
Nor scarcely deigned to look below.

XXIV

Then far beyond, above the night,
Above the umber, amber hue,
Above the lean moon's blare and blight,
One mighty ice shaft shimmered through;
One gleaming peak, as white, as lone
As you could think the great white throne
Stood up against the cobalt blue,
And kept companion with the stars
Despite dusk walls or umber bars.

XXV

That wall, that hideous prison wall,
That blackness, umber, amber hue,
It cumbers you, encircles you,
It mantles as a hearse's pall.
Your eyes lift to the star-pricked sky,
You lift your frosted face, you pray
That e'en the sickly moon might stay
A time, if but to see you die.
Yet how it blinds you, body, soul!
You can no longer keep control.
Your feebled senses fall astray:
You cannot think, you dare not say.

XXVI

And now such under gleam of light,
Such blazing, flaming, frightful glare;
Such sudden, deadly, lightning gleam,
Some like a monstrous, mad nightmare—

Such hideous light, born of such night!
It burst, with changeful interval,
From out the ice beneath the wall,
From out the groaning, surging stream
That breathed, or tried to breathe, in vain,
That struggled, strangled, shrieked with pain!
'Twas as if he of Patmos read,
Sat by with burning pen and said,
With piteous and prophetic voice,
“The earth shall pass with rustling noise.”

XXVII

Swift out the ice-crack, fiery red,
Swift up the umber wall and back,
Then 'round and 'round, up, down and back,
The sudden lightning sped and sped,
Until the walls hung burnished red,
An instant red, then yellow, white,
With something more than earthly light.

XXVIII

It blinds your eyes until they burn,
Until you dare not look or turn,
But think of him who saw and told
The story of, the glory of,
The jasper walls, the streets of gold,
Where trails God's unseen garments' hem
The holy New Jerusalem.

XXIX

Then while he trudged he tried to think—
And then another sudden light,
Or red or yellow, blue or white,
Burst up from out the very brink
Of where he passed and, left or right,
It burnished yet again the walls!
Then up, straight up against the stars
That seemed as jostled, rent with jars!
Then silent night. Where next and when?
Then blank, black interval, and then—
And oh, those blank, dread intervals,
This writing on the umber walls!

XXX

The blazing Borealis passed,
The umber walls fell down at last
And left the great cathedral stars,—
The five-horned stars, blent, burnished bars
Of gold, red, gleaming, blinding gold—
And still the cold, the killing cold!

XXXI

The moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
She bared her full white breast, she dared
The sun e'er show his face again.
She seemed to know no change, she kept
Carousal constantly, nor slept,
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared
The fearful meaning, the mad pain,
The weary eyes, the poor, dazed brain
That came at last to feel, to see
The dread, dead touch of lunacy.

XXXII

How loud the silence! Oh, how loud!
How more than beautiful the shroud
Of dead Light in the moon-mad north
When great torch-tipping stars stand forth
Above the black, slow-moving pall
As at some fearful funeral!

XXXIII

The moon blares as mad trumpets blare
To marshaled warriors long and loud:
The cobalt blue knows not a cloud,
But oh, beware that moon, beware
Her ghostly, graveyard, moon-mad stare!

XXXIV

Beware white silence more than white!
Beware the five-horned starry rune;
Beware the groaning gorge below;
Beware the wide, white world of snow,
Where trees hang white as hooded nun—
No thing not white, not one, not one,
But most beware that mad white moon.

XXXV

All day, all day, all night, all night—
Nay, nay, not yet or night or day.
Just whiteness, whiteness, ghastly white
Made doubly white by that mad moon
And strange stars jangled out of tune!

XXXVI

At last he saw, or seemed to see,
Above, beyond, another world.
Far up the ice-hung path there curled
A red-veined cloud, a canopy
That topt the fearful ice-built peak
That seemed to prop the very porch

Of God's house; then, as if a torch
Burned fierce, there flashed a fiery streak,
A flush, a blush on heaven's cheek!

XXXVII

The dogs sat down, men sat the sled
And watched the flush, the blush of red.
The little woolly dogs they knew,
Yet scarce knew what they were about.
They thrust their noses up and out,
They drank the Light, what else to do?
Their little feet, so worn, so true,
Could scarce keep quiet for delight.
They knew, they knew, how much they knew
The mighty breaking up of night!
Their bright eyes sparkled with such joy
That they at last should see loved Light!
The tandem sudden broke all rule,
Swung back, each leaping like a boy
Let loose from some dark, ugly school—
Leaped up and tried to lick his hand—
Stood up as happy children stand.

XXXVIII

How tenderly God's finger set
His crimson flower on that height
Above the battered walls of night!
A little space it flourished yet,
And then His angel, His first-born,
Burst through, as on that primal morn!

XXXIX

His right hand held a sword of flame,
His left hand javelins of light;
And swift down, down, right down he came!
His bright wings wide as the wide sky,
And right and left, and hip and thigh,
He smote the marshaled hosts of night
With all his majesty and might.

XL

The scared moon paled and she forgot
Her pomp and pride and turned to fly.
The ice-heaved palisades, the high
Heaved peaks that propped God's house, the stars
That flamed above the prison bars,
As battle stars with fury fraught,
Were burned to ruin and were not.

XLI

Then glad earth shook her raiment wide,
And free and far, and stood up tall,
As some proud woman, satisfied,
Forgets, and yet remembers all.
She stood exultant, till her form,
A queen above some battle storm,
Blazed with the glory, the delight
Of battle with the hosts of night.
And night was broken. Light at last
Lay on the Yukon. Night had passed.

I named the great stars that seemed to perch on the peaks and steeps close at either hand as we ascended the ice floor of the Yukon, “Cathedral stars” simply because they looked it at the time, although ordinarily they seemed to be normal stars, except that they were incredibly large and their five horns far brighter than rays of the sun. But when a seam or stream of flame would burst from the edge of the river's bed and suddenly take possession, for a few seconds, of heaven and earth, they would flare up like things of life, their five horns of gold pointing straight up like cathedral spires. Then as suddenly all would be black, umber, amber, cobalt, and the great, glittering stars again would be normal. I had, to my dismay, as a hired scribe when trying to get from Klondike to the Bering Sea by way of the Yukon—1897—found the river closed at the edge of the Arctic circle. It was nearly two thousand miles to the sea, all ice and snow, with not so much as a dog-track before me and only midnight 'round about me. There was nothing to do but to try to get back to my cabin on the Klondike. In the line of my employment I kept a journal of the solitary seventy-two days and nights—mostly night— spent in the silent and terrible ascent of the savage sea of ice. But enough; a tithe of the scenes, the colors, the unnatural phenomena in these lines would be weary work and dreary reading. Nor have I time or disposition, even in this note, to explain, urge or argue.

Briefly, then, “The Borealis race,” as seen even by Burns in Scotland, is a substance. It is not only visible and varied, but it is tangible and subject to the law of gravitation, although a certain, or rather uncertain, sort of electricity. It is born of friction; yet it is as cold as the electric force which we have harnessed is hot; and I believe that a full charge of it, when suddenly bursting from a rent or fissure in the ice, is deadly; else why do the dogs fall down and whine when they hear and see it shoot up too near at hand?

I can no more account for the manifold colors than I can for the little gathering of cardinal hues when you smite the transparent ice covering a lake or river. I can only say that it would take the keen eyes of a Lyons silk-weaver to distinguish and name the colors that burst up through the ice from the groaning, grinding waters of the Yukon; but the prevailing colors are positive; that is, red, yellow, saffron, crimson and so on. And these seem most forceful if they do not burst forth at an angle and collide and carrom and burnish the walls 'round about. They seem to influence the stars, as they leap up, up and up. But the colder colors seem more slow and heavy. I once saw a slanting, steel-colored column break overhead and fall to pieces right in my path. It lay like a dull, mobile smoke on the snow for some seconds. As the dogs sat down and whined, I jerked off a glove and tried to take some of it in my hand. I may have fancied it, but it seemed to sting and tingle like a little battery; and it surely was as cold as death.

I spent some time with the Bishop of Selkirk, on Mission Island, trying to get some light on all this, for he had been hereabouts for near thirty years; but the good man seemed to depend on what he had read, rather than what he had seen, contenting himself with admiring the works of God and the glory of it all. He gave me his London book, “The Bible Under the Northern Lights,” from which I have pilfered generously.

When I told him that I had come to a positive conclusion on the points set down, he said: “Well, maybe it all comes from friction, but you must know that the same phenomena is seen at Great Slave Lake, as well as on the seas of northern Greenland. No, it is as well to say that it is all the glory of God.”

CANTO III

I

The days grew longer, stronger, yet
The strong man grew then as a child.
Too hard the tension and too wild
The terror; he could not forget.
And now at last when Light was, now
He could not see nor lift his eyes,
Nor lift a hand in any wise.
It was as when a race is won
By some strong favorite athlete,
Then sinks down dying at your feet.

II

The red chief led him on and on
To his high lodge by gorged Yukon
And housed him kindly as his own,
Blind, broken, dazed, and so alone!

III

The low bark lodge was desolate,
And deathly cold by night, by day.
Poor, hungered children of the snows,
They heaped the fire as he froze,
Did all they could, yet what could they
But pity his most piteous fate
And pitying, silent, watch and wait?

IV

His face was ever to the wall
Or buried in his skins; the light—
He could not bear the light of day
Nor bear the heaped-up flame at night—
Not bear one touch of light at all.
There are no pains, no sharp death throes,
So dread as blindness of the snows.

V

He thought of home, he thought of her,
Thought most of her, and pictured how
She walked in springtime splendor where
Warm sea winds twined her heavy hair
In great Greek braids piled fold on fold,
Or loosely blown, as poppy's gold.

VI

And then he thought of her afar
Mid follies, and his soul at war
With self, self will, and iron fate
Grew as a blackened thing of hate!
And then he prayed forgiveness, prayed
As one in sin and sore afraid.

VII

And praying so he dreamed, he dreamed
She sat there looking in his face,
Sat silent by in that dread place,
Sat silent weeping, so it seemed,

Sat still, sat weeping silently.
He saw her tears and yet he knew,
The blind man knew he could not see,
Scarce hope to see for years and years.
And then he seemed to hear her tears,
To hear them steal her loose hair through
And gently fall, as falls the dew
And still, small rain of summer morn,
That makes for harvests, yellow corn.

VIII

He raised his hand, he touched her hair;
He did not start, he did not say;
It seemed that she was surely there;
He only questioned would she stay.
How glad he was! Why, now, what care
For hunger, blindness, blinding pain,
Could he but touch her hair again?

IX

He heard her rise, give quick command
To patient, skin-clad, savage men
To heap the wood, come, go, and then
Go feed their woolly friends at hand,
To bring fresh stores, still heap fresh flame,
Then go, then come, as morning came.

X

All seemed so real! He dared not stir,
Lest he might break this dream of her.
How holy, holy sweet her voice,
Like benediction o'er the dead!

So glad he was, so grateful he,
And thanking God most fervently,
Forgot his plight, forgot his pain,
And deep at heart did he rejoice;
Yet prayed he might not wake again
To peril, blindness, piteous pain.

XI

Then, as he hid his face, she came
And leaned quite near and took his hand.
'Twas cold, 'twas very cold, 'twas thin
And bony, black, just skin and bone,
Just bone and wrinkled mummy-skin.
She held it out against the flame,
Then pressed it with her two warm hands.
It seemed as she could feel the sands
Of life slow sift to shadow land.
Close on his hurt eyes she laid hand,
The while she, wearied, nodded, slept.
The flame burned low, the wind's wild moan
Awakened her. Cold as a stone
His starved form, shrunken to a shade,
Stretched in the darkness, and, dismayed,
She put the robes back and she crept
Close down beside and softly laid
Her warm, strong form to his and slept,
The while her dusk men vigil kept.

XII

That long, long night, that needed rest!
Then flames at morn; her precious store
Heaped hard by on the earthen floor
While mute brown men, starved men, stood by

To wait the slightest breath or sigh
Or sign of wakening request—
What silence, patience, trust! What rest!
Of all good things, I say the best
Beneath God's sun is rest, and—rest.

XIII

She slowly wakened from her sleep
To find him sleeping, silent, deep!
What food for all, what feast for all,
To chief or slave, or great or small,
Ranged round the flaming, glowing heap—
Such lank, lean flank, such hungry zest!
Such reach of limb, such rest, such rest!

XIV

Why, he had gone, had gladly gone
In quest of his eternal Light,
Beyond all dolours, that dread night,
Had she not reached her hand and drawn,
Hard drawn him back and held him so,
Held him so hard he could not go.
And yet he lingered by the brink,
As dulled and dazed as you can think—
Long, long he lingered, helpless lay,
A babe, a broken pot of clay.

XV

She made a broader couch, she sat
All day beside and held his hand
Lest he might sudden slip away.
And she all night beside him lay,

Lest these last grains of sinking sand
Might in the still night slip and pass,
With none at hand to turn the glass.

XVI

And did the red men prate thereat?
Why, they had laid them down and died
For her, those simple dusky sons
Of nature, children of the snows,
Born where the ice-bound river runs,
Born where the Arctic torrent flows.
Look you for evil? Look for ill
Or good, you find just what you will.

XVII

He spake no more than babe might speak:
His eyes were as the kitten's eyes
That open slowly with surprise
Then close as if to sleep a week;
But still he held, as if he knew,
The warm, strong hand, the healthful hand,
The dauntless, daring hand and true,
Nor, while he waked, would his unfold,
But held, as drowning man might hold
Who hopes no more of life or land,
But, as from habit, clutches hand.

XVIII

Once, as she thought he surely slept,
She slowly drew herself aside,
He thrust his hand as terrified,
Caught back her hand, kissed it and wept.

Then she, too, wept, wept tears like rain,
Her first warm, welcome happy tears,
Drew in her breath, put by her fears
And knew she had not dared in vain.

XIX

Yet day by day, hard on the brink
He hung with half-averted head,
As silent, listless, as the dead,
As sad to see as you can think.
Their lorn lodge sat the terraced steep
Above the wide, wild, groaning stream
That, like some monster in a dream,
Cried out in broken, breathless sleep;
And looking down, night after night,
She saw leap forth that sword of Light.

XX

She guessed, she knew the flaming sword
That turned which way to watch and ward
And guard the wall and ever guard
The Tree of Life, as it is writ.
The hand, the hilt, she could not see,
Nor yet the true, life-giving tree,
Nor cherubim that cherished it,
But yet she saw the flaming sword,
As written in the Book, the Word.

XXI

She held his hand, he did not stir,
And as she nightly sat and sat,
She silent gazed and guessed thereat.

His fancies seemed to come to her;
She could not see the Tree of Life,
How fair it grew or where it grew,
But this she knew and surely knew,
That gleaming sword meant holy strife
To keep and guard the Tree of Life.

XXII

Oh, flaming sword, rest not nor rust!
The Tree of Life is hewn and torn,
The Tree of Life is bowed and worn,
The Tree of Life is in the dust.
Hew brute man down, hew branch and root,
Till he may spare the Tree of Life,
The pale, the piteous woman, wife—
Till he shall learn, as learn he must,
To lift her fair face from the dust.

XXIII

She watched the wabbly moose at morn
Climb steeply up the further steep,
Huge, solitary and forlorn.
She saw him climb, turn, look and keep
Scared watch, this wild, ungainly beast,
This mateless, lost thing and the last
That roamed before and since the flood—
That climbed and climbed the topmost hill
As if he heard the deluge still.

XXIV

The sparse, brown children of the snow
Began to stir, as sap is stirred

In springtime by the song of bird,
And trudge by, wearily and slow,
Beneath their load of dappled skins
That weighed them down as weighty sins.

XXV

And oft they paused, turned and looked back
Along their desolate white track,
With arched hand raised to shield their eyes—
Looked back as if for something lost
Or left behind, of precious cost,
Sad-eyed and silent, mutely wise,
As just expelled from Paradise.

XXVI

How sad their dark, fixed faces seemed,
As if of long-remembered sins!
They listless moved, as if they dreamed,
As if they knew not where to go
In all their wide, white world of snow.
She could but think upon the day
God made them garments from the skins
Of beasts, then turned and bade them go,
Go forth as willed they, to and fro.

XXVII

Between the cloud-capt walls of snow
A wide-winged raven, croaking low,
Passed and repassed, each weary day,
And would not rest, not go, not stay,
But ever, ever to and fro,

As when forth from the ark of old;
And ever as he passed, each day
Let fall one croak, so cold, so cold
It seemed to strike the ice below
And break in fragments hard as fate;
It fell so cold, so desolate.

XXVIII

At last the sun hung hot and high,
Hung where that heartless moon had hung.
A dove-hued moose bird sudden sung
And had glad answerings hard by;
The icy steeps began to pour
Mad tumult down the rock-built steep.
The great Yukon began to roar,
As if with pain in broken sleep.
The breaking ice began to groan,
The very mountains seemed to moan.

XXIX

Then, bursting like a cannon's boom,
The great stream broke its icy bands,
And rushed and ran with outstretched hands
That laid hard hold the willow lands,
Rent wide the somber, gopher gloom
And roared for room, for room, for room!

XXX

The stalwart moose climbed hard his steep,
Climbed till he wallowed, brisket deep,
In soft'ning, sinking steeps of snow,
Then raging, turned to look below.

XXXI

He tossed, shook high his antlered head,
Blew blast on blast through his huge nose,
Then, wild with savage rage and fright,
He climbed, climbed to the highest height,
As if he felt the flood once more
Had come to swallow sea and shore.

XXXII

The waters sank, the man uprose,
A boat of skins, his Eskimo,
Then down from out the world of snow
They passed tow'rd seas of calm repose
Where wide sails waited, warm sea wind,
For mango isles and tamarind.
[OMITTED]

XXXIII

What wonders ward these Arctic seas!
What dread, dumb, midnight days are these!
A wonder world of night and light;
A land of blackness blent with white,
A land of water, ices, snow,
Where ice is emperor and floe
And berg and pack and jam and drift
Forever grind and gnaw and lift
And tide about the bleak North Pole—
Where bull whales bellow, blow and blow
Great rainbows in their lover's quest
With all a sunland lover's zest!

A land of contradictions and
A desolated dead man's land!
A land of neither life nor soul;
A land where isles on isles of bone
And totem towns lie lifeless, lone—
Their tombstones just a totem pole.

XXXIV

Their cedar boat deep ballasted
With bags of bleak, Koyukuk's gold,
An ancient Bedford salt at head,
Drives through the ice floes, jolly, bold!
What isles! Saghalien beyond,
Bleak, blown Saghalien, where bear
And wild men are as one and share
Their caves and shaggy coats of hair
In close affection, warm and fond.
At least, so ran the jolly tale
Of him who steered them on and on
Tow'rd Saghalien from far Yukon—
This Bedford salt who lassoed whales,
Or said he did, of largest size,
And so, according, made his tales
Of whales to fit in size his lies,
The while they sailed tow'rd Saghalien.

XXXV

What worlds, these wild Aleutian Isles!
What wonder worlds, unnamed, unknown!
They lift a thousand icy miles
From Unalaska, bleak and lone
And bare as icebergs anywhere,

Save where the white fox, black fox, red,
Starts from his ice and snow-built bed,
And like some strange bird flits the air.
You sometimes see the white sea bear,
A mother seal with babe asleep
Held close to breast in careful keep,
And hear a thousand sea birds scream
And see the wide-winged albatross
In silence bear his shadow cross
As still and restful as a dream—
Naught else is here; here life is not;
'Tis as the land that God forgot.

XXXVI

And yet it was not always so;
This old salt tells a thousand tales
Of love and joy, of weal and woe,
That happened in the long ago
When reindeer ranged the mossy vales
That dot this thousand miles of isles;
That here the fond Aleutian maid,
With naught to fright or make afraid,
Lived, loved and silent went her way
As yon swift albatross in grey.
But totem towns have naught to say
Of all her tears and all her smiles.

XXXVII

And this, one of so many tales,
This Bedford salt in quest of whales!
He tells of one once favored isle
Far out, a full five hundred mile,

Where dwelt a Russian giant, knave,
A pirate, priest, and all in one,
With many wives, and reindeer white
As Saint Elias in the sun;
Yet every wife was as a slave
To herd his white deer night by night
And day by day to pluck away
Each hair that was not perfect white.

XXXVIII

“And,” says this bearded Bedford salt,
This man of whales and wondrous tales
Of seas of ice and Arctic gales,
This truthful salt without one fault—
“White reindeer's milk is yellow gold
And he who drinks it lives for aye;
He will not drown, he cannot die,
Nor hunger, thirst, nor yet grow cold,
But live and live a thousand lives—
Ten thousand deer, two thousand wives.

XXXIX

“And what the end?” He turns his quid,
This ancient, sea-baked, Bedford man—
“The thing blowed up, you bet it did,
A bloomin' big volcano, and
So bright that you can stand and write
Your log most any bloomin' night,
Five hundred miles away to-day.
Them deers? They're now the milky way.”

But now enough of hairy men,
Of monstrous beasts before the flood,
White Arctic chine, black gopher wood,
Of flower-fed skies, of ice-sown seas;
Come, let us court love-land again.
Behold, how good is love, how fair!
Behold, how fair is love, how good!
A sense of burning sandalwood
Is in my nostrils and the air
Is redolent of cherry trees
Red, pink, and brown with Nippon bees.