 | Historical Odes and Other Poems |  |
Where the meridians narrow; where the ice
Sets its white teeth against the world, a vice
Which grips the countless islets of the sea,
Northwards we watch; our slackened hands the key
Of the last problem of the world enfold.
Sets its white teeth against the world, a vice
Which grips the countless islets of the sea,
Northwards we watch; our slackened hands the key
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Where the cold northern desert lies unrolled
Beneath the signs that never drink the wave,
A voice is heard, our brethren from their grave
In resurrection, they who sought and found
In life, in death; they tell us that unbound
The mystery lies, the adamantine chain
About the rough fell of the northern main
Is broken now; they tell us all their praise
By silence; silently before our gaze
They rise: they tell us not of death; they died.
Beneath the signs that never drink the wave,
A voice is heard, our brethren from their grave
In resurrection, they who sought and found
In life, in death; they tell us that unbound
The mystery lies, the adamantine chain
About the rough fell of the northern main
Is broken now; they tell us all their praise
By silence; silently before our gaze
They rise: they tell us not of death; they died.
Why should they speak of death who have untied
The knot which England strove to loose of old
From those first days when she alone was bold
To emulate the glory on your brows,
Columbus and Da Gama? earth avows
No greater deed; alone did England choose
Those uncouth seas; her sons alone had thews
Sufficient that toward both east and west,
They should attempt the north, whether to wrest
Their doubled passage round the Northern Rock,
Which bars the eastward voyage, and unlock
The sevenfold mouth of Dwina; or to thread
From belt to belt the gulfs and channels led
About the sunken crest of that half-sphere
Which westward greets the Pole: England holds here
The old renown, and still the Vikings ride:
Willoughby died, and Franklin too hath died;
Chancellor won, and Franklin too hath won.
The knot which England strove to loose of old
From those first days when she alone was bold
To emulate the glory on your brows,
Columbus and Da Gama? earth avows
No greater deed; alone did England choose
Those uncouth seas; her sons alone had thews
Sufficient that toward both east and west,
They should attempt the north, whether to wrest
Their doubled passage round the Northern Rock,
Which bars the eastward voyage, and unlock
The sevenfold mouth of Dwina; or to thread
From belt to belt the gulfs and channels led
About the sunken crest of that half-sphere
Which westward greets the Pole: England holds here
The old renown, and still the Vikings ride:
Willoughby died, and Franklin too hath died;
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Come then, and witness where the ice-fields run
To glacier edges upon boundless shores,
Where the moraine runs ruinous, where soars
The monumental berg, her stony folds
The numb and sterile earth with pain upholds
Above the sulky margin of the sea,
Half buried in primæval apathy
By waters washing round her island-limbs,
Half crusted in her frozen scales, while swims
The dull air round her, warped and woofed with snows,
And frost-smoke streaming from her gnashing floes.
Come then, and listen to the solemn voice
Which reaches us so newly o'er the poise
Of earth and water; listen, ere the rush
Of onward time as solemnly shall hush
The voice which speaks in its solemnities;
Ere memory parts, ere time this deed shall prize
As not the latest on his roll of deeds;
And much shall be forgotten which now pleads
With recent sorrow.
To glacier edges upon boundless shores,
Where the moraine runs ruinous, where soars
The monumental berg, her stony folds
The numb and sterile earth with pain upholds
Above the sulky margin of the sea,
Half buried in primæval apathy
By waters washing round her island-limbs,
Half crusted in her frozen scales, while swims
The dull air round her, warped and woofed with snows,
And frost-smoke streaming from her gnashing floes.
Come then, and listen to the solemn voice
Which reaches us so newly o'er the poise
Of earth and water; listen, ere the rush
Of onward time as solemnly shall hush
The voice which speaks in its solemnities;
Ere memory parts, ere time this deed shall prize
As not the latest on his roll of deeds;
And much shall be forgotten which now pleads
With recent sorrow.
By the supreme laws
Of being, in the human heart a cause
Exists, which seeks for ever the unknown:
This still draws close the links mysterious thrown
Between the worlds of matter and of thought;
Still animates the deep relation, fraught
With subtlest truth, of every outward thing
To the deep soul within the senses' ring.
Now, therefore, they are dearest to our race
Who spring with swiftest foot toward the chase
Of things unknown; and open to our gaze
Another means to grasp the hidden ways
Of that infinitude, which circles round
Our narrow life; another knowledge found
Demands our thanks; now, therefore, we unite
In saddened praise of those whose noble might
Has filled the Elizabethan chart, unrolled
By those who knew God's edicts from of old,
The circumnavigation that should be
By man accomplished: they laboriously
In their outgoings from our silver isle
Strove anciently in ships to reconcile
The face of nature with the thoughts of God,
As man conceives thereof: upon that road
Perished in victory the men we mourn,
Hailing in death creation's latest bourne.
Of being, in the human heart a cause
Exists, which seeks for ever the unknown:
This still draws close the links mysterious thrown
Between the worlds of matter and of thought;
Still animates the deep relation, fraught
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To the deep soul within the senses' ring.
Now, therefore, they are dearest to our race
Who spring with swiftest foot toward the chase
Of things unknown; and open to our gaze
Another means to grasp the hidden ways
Of that infinitude, which circles round
Our narrow life; another knowledge found
Demands our thanks; now, therefore, we unite
In saddened praise of those whose noble might
Has filled the Elizabethan chart, unrolled
By those who knew God's edicts from of old,
The circumnavigation that should be
By man accomplished: they laboriously
In their outgoings from our silver isle
Strove anciently in ships to reconcile
The face of nature with the thoughts of God,
As man conceives thereof: upon that road
Perished in victory the men we mourn,
Hailing in death creation's latest bourne.
Three lustres have been measured since they passed
From mortal view; the hero soul who cast
His threescore years behind him, and refused
The honours ripely due; and they who cruised
With him of old beyond the icy zone:
They took from hands heroic as their own
The world-famed ships returned from other goal,
From wandering round the starless southern pole,
The Erebus, the Terror; and they sailed:
The whalers saw them to an iceberg haled,
Waiting their passage through Lancaster Sound:
And since that day no human eye has found
Those mariners, but they have passed from men.
From mortal view; the hero soul who cast
His threescore years behind him, and refused
The honours ripely due; and they who cruised
With him of old beyond the icy zone:
They took from hands heroic as their own
The world-famed ships returned from other goal,
From wandering round the starless southern pole,
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The whalers saw them to an iceberg haled,
Waiting their passage through Lancaster Sound:
And since that day no human eye has found
Those mariners, but they have passed from men.
Fell the first lustre from the summer when
They parted, ere at all their track was gained:
The startled world had sought them, had unchained
Squadrons of rescue, scaled from isle to isle
That archipelago of death, awhile
In hope, but soon with dire inquietude,
For token none appeared, nor sign of good;
Until at length some happy news was found
Of their first winter upon Arctic ground,
And their first summer: this the happier news.
They parted, ere at all their track was gained:
The startled world had sought them, had unchained
Squadrons of rescue, scaled from isle to isle
That archipelago of death, awhile
In hope, but soon with dire inquietude,
For token none appeared, nor sign of good;
Until at length some happy news was found
Of their first winter upon Arctic ground,
And their first summer: this the happier news.
They had passed onward, gallant ships and crews,
And that great heart which harmonized the whole
To its firm purpose, onward, till the roll
Of summer seas was stiffened into death:
Then had they anchored in the isle beneath
North Devon, that shore which stretches stark and rude
Three parts toward the highest latitude;
Long had they struggled in the ice-choked seas,
Steering to gain the northernmost degrees,
That they might issue by the channel named
Of Wellington; until the autumn aimed
His bitter arrows and forbade their path.
And that great heart which harmonized the whole
To its firm purpose, onward, till the roll
Of summer seas was stiffened into death:
Then had they anchored in the isle beneath
North Devon, that shore which stretches stark and rude
Three parts toward the highest latitude;
Long had they struggled in the ice-choked seas,
Steering to gain the northernmost degrees,
That they might issue by the channel named
Of Wellington; until the autumn aimed
His bitter arrows and forbade their path.
The vision deepens now amid the wrath
Of avalanches, in the very heart
Of desolation; round in every part
Sweep out illusive channels, and the wind
From every quarter bears down scaly rind
Of broken floe and pack, which whirls along
By tempest launched, with tempest fury strong;
And these would rip and rend the thing that dares
Oppose them; while about the coast which stares
With frozen eyes upon the frozen sea,
Are shifted piece by piece incessantly.
The breaking floes, which cling with talons sharp
To desolate headland, cliff, and scar, and scarp,
Above the heaving of the tortured main.
We see those barks, like ghosts that wildly wane,
Flitting from point to point, essaying still
The illusive channels, and with swiftest skill
Foiling the icy grasp; an instant more
And they were crushed 'twixt icy shore and shore:
But as a spirit may survive the strife
Of all the base besetments of a life,
And keep itself serene, and pure and safe,
So they survive, surmounting like the waif
Of those wild waves; so they avoid the close
Of ice which fain would drift them in its throes
Far down the Atlantic: lo, at length they hail
The strand of Beechy, furl the shattered sail,
And rest; their winter appanage lies here.
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Of desolation; round in every part
Sweep out illusive channels, and the wind
From every quarter bears down scaly rind
Of broken floe and pack, which whirls along
By tempest launched, with tempest fury strong;
And these would rip and rend the thing that dares
Oppose them; while about the coast which stares
With frozen eyes upon the frozen sea,
Are shifted piece by piece incessantly.
The breaking floes, which cling with talons sharp
To desolate headland, cliff, and scar, and scarp,
Above the heaving of the tortured main.
We see those barks, like ghosts that wildly wane,
Flitting from point to point, essaying still
The illusive channels, and with swiftest skill
Foiling the icy grasp; an instant more
And they were crushed 'twixt icy shore and shore:
But as a spirit may survive the strife
Of all the base besetments of a life,
And keep itself serene, and pure and safe,
So they survive, surmounting like the waif
Of those wild waves; so they avoid the close
Of ice which fain would drift them in its throes
Far down the Atlantic: lo, at length they hail
The strand of Beechy, furl the shattered sail,
And rest; their winter appanage lies here.
Therefore, thou desert islet, thou art dear
For ever to the comrades of the brave;
Upon thy shores they wintered; by the grave
Thrice piled on thee thou 'rt dear; the rescuers found
After five years the relics on thy ground;
On thee the tokens of the sojourn lone
They saw; three monuments of simple stone
To three who died; the ordered mounds for store,
The armoury, the anchor beds, the shore
Traversed by sledge-ruts, and the ruined sites
Of observation, and the secret bights
Where lay the ships; the garden terraces
Of lichens, poppies, and anemones.
Ah, desolate island of the frozen wave,
What dost thou hold? A garden and a grave!
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Upon thy shores they wintered; by the grave
Thrice piled on thee thou 'rt dear; the rescuers found
After five years the relics on thy ground;
On thee the tokens of the sojourn lone
They saw; three monuments of simple stone
To three who died; the ordered mounds for store,
The armoury, the anchor beds, the shore
Traversed by sledge-ruts, and the ruined sites
Of observation, and the secret bights
Where lay the ships; the garden terraces
Of lichens, poppies, and anemones.
Ah, desolate island of the frozen wave,
What dost thou hold? A garden and a grave!
Here then they lay; they saw the winter night
Deepen upon them, as the sun his flight
Into the Scorpion urged; until adown
The unshaded darkness sunk with deeper frown,
Unbroken, till the moon bedewed the vault
With splendid light, Orion made assault
On darkness with his flaming sword; arose
The false Aurora from her long repose,
And vainly spread her wings of phosphor forth
To shroud the unpaling loadstar of the north:
Her splendours sweep through half the stars, they shine
With nebulous lustre, liquid, opaline;
Then burst with purpling anger through the gloom,
And the far-stretching pallid snows illume
With crimson shadows and with bickering flaws;
A spectral dance, which grows a heavy cause
To simple minds of melancholy dread;
As if the Lapland sorceries had led
Illusion round the pole; that long eclipse
Wrought out weird phantasies; behold where dips
With hissing steam of fire into the sea
Some lurid star; where some discoloured tree
Branches across the zenith, some vast arc
All tremulously spans the purple dark;
Refraction lifts the hummocks into hills;
The fissures gleam like wavy lines of rills
From darkling mountains poured; upon the sight
The illumined vapours glow with fairy light;
The darkness whispers o'er the boundless plain,
Vast sighs, as if some monster in his pain
Rose on uneasy pillow; burst the seams
Of ice with awful crash, and sudden gleams
Of dark and rushing water, which o'erfills
The fissures, till the strong-ribbed crystal thrills;
As if the region terrors strove to shake
The soul of man, brave man! The heart may quake,
The flesh may shrivel, but the will shall wait
Unmoved: God gave man will to conquer fate.
Deepen upon them, as the sun his flight
Into the Scorpion urged; until adown
The unshaded darkness sunk with deeper frown,
Unbroken, till the moon bedewed the vault
With splendid light, Orion made assault
On darkness with his flaming sword; arose
The false Aurora from her long repose,
And vainly spread her wings of phosphor forth
To shroud the unpaling loadstar of the north:
Her splendours sweep through half the stars, they shine
With nebulous lustre, liquid, opaline;
Then burst with purpling anger through the gloom,
And the far-stretching pallid snows illume
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A spectral dance, which grows a heavy cause
To simple minds of melancholy dread;
As if the Lapland sorceries had led
Illusion round the pole; that long eclipse
Wrought out weird phantasies; behold where dips
With hissing steam of fire into the sea
Some lurid star; where some discoloured tree
Branches across the zenith, some vast arc
All tremulously spans the purple dark;
Refraction lifts the hummocks into hills;
The fissures gleam like wavy lines of rills
From darkling mountains poured; upon the sight
The illumined vapours glow with fairy light;
The darkness whispers o'er the boundless plain,
Vast sighs, as if some monster in his pain
Rose on uneasy pillow; burst the seams
Of ice with awful crash, and sudden gleams
Of dark and rushing water, which o'erfills
The fissures, till the strong-ribbed crystal thrills;
As if the region terrors strove to shake
The soul of man, brave man! The heart may quake,
The flesh may shrivel, but the will shall wait
Unmoved: God gave man will to conquer fate.
Then in the month when shines the Northern Crown,
A fickle dawn arises far adown
The southern sky, traversing briefest space
Of heaven, and vanishing without a trace;
So over chaos when God first made light
Without a sun, the vision flitted bright,
Then died away, and the first day was done.
But morn by morn the promise of the sun
Grows clear; the south is filled with crimson flocks
In place of that grim darkness and its shocks:
Behind the cloud-bars undulates and flows
A subtle radiance; this too clears and grows
To white intensity, and then the shroud
Bursts from the sun-god, and the clammy crowd
Of vapours rustles into golden foam
Before his prow; heaven is again his home.
A fickle dawn arises far adown
The southern sky, traversing briefest space
Of heaven, and vanishing without a trace;
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Without a sun, the vision flitted bright,
Then died away, and the first day was done.
But morn by morn the promise of the sun
Grows clear; the south is filled with crimson flocks
In place of that grim darkness and its shocks:
Behind the cloud-bars undulates and flows
A subtle radiance; this too clears and grows
To white intensity, and then the shroud
Bursts from the sun-god, and the clammy crowd
Of vapours rustles into golden foam
Before his prow; heaven is again his home.
Ah, then they issued from their cabined sleep,
They watched the thaw pervading through the deep
Beneath a light that sets not: wildly pour
The glacial torrents from the hills that bore
The avalanche; the glistening ice-fields crawl
Like snakes along the tideways; grandly fall
The loosened bergs to welter on their way;
And brightly dance the blue free waves, and play
The thawing monsters; heaves its hoary flakes
The Arctic whale, the solemn walrus makes
Unwieldy mirth, the seal with human eyes
Flaps o'er the fragments; burst a thousand cries
From the wild sea-birds sailing northward all,
The ptarmigan, the eider duck; they call
The little dovekie from his winter watch
Upon the ice to secret haunts, where snatch
Once more their struggling life those mountain flowers
Which bloom on Arctic wastes or Alpine towers
Alike: sweet crowfoot, hardy saxafrage,
And acid sorrel; these o'ergrow the age
Of hoary headland, and of desolate lea;
Yea, willow and sweet purple bleaberry,
Dwarfed into miniature by ceaseless frost,
These clothe the splintered ledges; they have lost
Their uprightness, along the rocks they trail,
Fearing the icy wind; and thin and pale
Live on for love of all the life that is:
The wavy hair-grass weaves its phantasies
In little circles o'er the reindeer moss.
They watched the thaw pervading through the deep
Beneath a light that sets not: wildly pour
The glacial torrents from the hills that bore
The avalanche; the glistening ice-fields crawl
Like snakes along the tideways; grandly fall
The loosened bergs to welter on their way;
And brightly dance the blue free waves, and play
The thawing monsters; heaves its hoary flakes
The Arctic whale, the solemn walrus makes
Unwieldy mirth, the seal with human eyes
Flaps o'er the fragments; burst a thousand cries
From the wild sea-birds sailing northward all,
The ptarmigan, the eider duck; they call
The little dovekie from his winter watch
Upon the ice to secret haunts, where snatch
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Which bloom on Arctic wastes or Alpine towers
Alike: sweet crowfoot, hardy saxafrage,
And acid sorrel; these o'ergrow the age
Of hoary headland, and of desolate lea;
Yea, willow and sweet purple bleaberry,
Dwarfed into miniature by ceaseless frost,
These clothe the splintered ledges; they have lost
Their uprightness, along the rocks they trail,
Fearing the icy wind; and thin and pale
Live on for love of all the life that is:
The wavy hair-grass weaves its phantasies
In little circles o'er the reindeer moss.
So scanty is the spring to those who cross
The northern desert; yet that winter lone
And scanty spring were brightest days that shone
For those who died: two direful winters more
They passed, unblessed by any sheltering shore,
Nipped in the ice: strained forth in vain the sail,
The steam-drift did but freeze upon the gale:
The cruel pack still gripped them, still delayed
Nineteen long months, and scarce one mile they made
For every month: then came the bitter end.
The northern desert; yet that winter lone
And scanty spring were brightest days that shone
For those who died: two direful winters more
They passed, unblessed by any sheltering shore,
Nipped in the ice: strained forth in vain the sail,
The steam-drift did but freeze upon the gale:
The cruel pack still gripped them, still delayed
Nineteen long months, and scarce one mile they made
For every month: then came the bitter end.
And nought was heard, though England still did send
Through summers six her succours; efforts vain
Columbia added; yet the northern main
Hid its dread secret, nought of comfort more;
Though tenderly the seekers did explore
Coast-line and stream, as brothers tenderly
For brothers dead: England, upon the sea
Thy name is greatest, and 'tis nowhere writ
More grandly than upon the isles which split
The frozen ocean into thousand streams;
For every headland, every channel gleams
With names for ever precious in our story,
E'en from of old, from that first break of glory
Which makes our little island shine a star
Set in the nether heaven: they sought afar,
Yet what was left those seekers now to find?
Death, only death was left by time behind,
Or victory, or death in victory.
Through summers six her succours; efforts vain
Columbia added; yet the northern main
Hid its dread secret, nought of comfort more;
Though tenderly the seekers did explore
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For brothers dead: England, upon the sea
Thy name is greatest, and 'tis nowhere writ
More grandly than upon the isles which split
The frozen ocean into thousand streams;
For every headland, every channel gleams
With names for ever precious in our story,
E'en from of old, from that first break of glory
Which makes our little island shine a star
Set in the nether heaven: they sought afar,
Yet what was left those seekers now to find?
Death, only death was left by time behind,
Or victory, or death in victory.
And this was ravished from the ghostly sea,
And this one seeker out of many found:
For first in Parker Bay, that western sound
Which joins the clear Pacific, he descried
Those iron-banded timbers which the tide
Was drifting; those torn shreds of oak and pine
Proclaim the guerdon won, the glory thine,
Franklin; for they in western straits were laid;
Wherefore the North-west Passage thou hadst made,
And thine the prize for which our chivalry
Still rode the northern tempests; yea, the sea
Eastward and westward joins a slender hand
O'er the new world; and shattered pole and band
Are hero's lance left shivered in the lists.
And this one seeker out of many found:
For first in Parker Bay, that western sound
Which joins the clear Pacific, he descried
Those iron-banded timbers which the tide
Was drifting; those torn shreds of oak and pine
Proclaim the guerdon won, the glory thine,
Franklin; for they in western straits were laid;
Wherefore the North-west Passage thou hadst made,
And thine the prize for which our chivalry
Still rode the northern tempests; yea, the sea
Eastward and westward joins a slender hand
O'er the new world; and shattered pole and band
Are hero's lance left shivered in the lists.
Another thing that seeker in the mists
Of fate had found; the wandering Esquimaux
A spectral band had met long years ago,
As lives are counted;—pallid faces set
Toward the south, gaunt bodies toiling yet
For life; they saw them dragging still the sledge,
Heavy as death, along the rugged edge
Of that vast ice-stream which, with monstrous tread,
An avalanche that fills an ocean's bed,
Crashes its way by shattered floe and floe,
Not swifter than descends the hardened snow
From Alps through ages; lo, they take their way
Toward the Great Fish River, where, they say,
God may send deer to shoot; and all the waste
Shall end, and all the toil and panic haste.
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A spectral band had met long years ago,
As lives are counted;—pallid faces set
Toward the south, gaunt bodies toiling yet
For life; they saw them dragging still the sledge,
Heavy as death, along the rugged edge
Of that vast ice-stream which, with monstrous tread,
An avalanche that fills an ocean's bed,
Crashes its way by shattered floe and floe,
Not swifter than descends the hardened snow
From Alps through ages; lo, they take their way
Toward the Great Fish River, where, they say,
God may send deer to shoot; and all the waste
Shall end, and all the toil and panic haste.
Again those wanderers spake, a tale of dread:
They saw them scattered, famished, frozen, dead,
Upon the snow; their bones were bleaching there,
The snow their shroud, the ice their sepulchre:
Oh victory, and death in victory!
They saw them scattered, famished, frozen, dead,
Upon the snow; their bones were bleaching there,
The snow their shroud, the ice their sepulchre:
Oh victory, and death in victory!
No more did England struggle hopelessly
The dead to gather, since the tale was told;
Enough had perished in the hungry cold.
No more, she cried, my sons shall trust those waves,
Enough have died; their peace be on their graves;
Beneath an ever-rising tomb they lie,
Their deathless star regards them from the sky;
Enough have died; the living to console
Be ours; the dead we seek not: from the roll
Of living men their names were blotted out;
Yes, further venture had been less devout.
The dead to gather, since the tale was told;
Enough had perished in the hungry cold.
No more, she cried, my sons shall trust those waves,
Enough have died; their peace be on their graves;
Beneath an ever-rising tomb they lie,
Their deathless star regards them from the sky;
Enough have died; the living to console
Be ours; the dead we seek not: from the roll
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Yes, further venture had been less devout.
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