The poetical works of James Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Depopulation of the Norwegian Colonies on the Eastern Coast of Greenland, and the Abandonment of Intercourse with it from Europe, in consequence of the Increase of the Arctic Ices, about the beginning of the Fifteenth Century.

Launch on the gulf, my little Greenland bark!
Bear me through scenes unutterably dark;
Scenes with the mystery of Nature seal'd,
Nor till the day of doom to be reveal'd.
What though the spirits of the arctic gales
Freeze round thy prow, or fight against thy sails,
Safe as Arion, whom the dolphin bore,
Enamour'd of his music, to the shore,
On thee adventuring o'er an unknown main,
I raise to warring elements a strain
Of kindred harmony:—O, lend your breath,
Ye tempests! while I sing this reign of death:
Utter dark sayings of the days of old;
In parables upon my harp unfold
Deeds perish'd from remembrance; truth, array'd,
Like heaven by night, in emblematic shade,
When shines the horoscope, and star on star
By what they are not lead to what they are;
Atoms, that twinkle in an infant's eye,
Are worlds, suns, systems in the' unbounded sky:
Thus the few fabled woes my strains create
Are hieroglyphics in a book of Fate;
And while the shadowy symbols I unroll,
Imagination reads a direr scroll.
Wake, ye wild visions! o'er the northern deep,
On clouds and winds, like warrior-spectres sweep;
Show by what plagues and hurricanes destroy'd,
A breathing realm became a torpid void!

The floods are raging, and the gales blow high,
Low as a dungeon-roof impends the sky;
Prisoners of hope, between the clouds and waves,
Six fearless sailors man yon boat, that braves
Peril redoubling upon peril past:
—From childhood nurslings of the wayward blast,
Aloft as o'er a buoyant arch they go,
Whose keystone breaks;—as deep they plunge below;
Unyielding, though the strength of man be vain;
Struggling, though borne like surf along the main;
In front, a battlement of rocks; in rear,
Billow on billow bounding: near, more near,
They verge to ruin;—life and death depend
On the next impulse;—shrieks and prayers ascend;
When, like the fish that mounts on drizzling wings,
Sheer from the gulf the' ejected vessel springs,
And grounds on inland ice, beyond the track
Of hissing foam-wreaths, whence the tide roll'd back;
Then ere that tide, returning to the charge,
Swallows the wreck, the captives are at large.
On either hand steep hills obstruct their path;
Behind, the ocean roaring in his wrath,
Mad as a Libyan wilderness by night,
With all its lions up, in chase or fight.
The fugitives right onward shun the beach,
Nor tarry till the inmost cove they reach;
Recluded in the labyrinthine dell,
Like the last hollow of a spiral shell.
There, with the axe or knife which haste could save,
They build a house;—perhaps they dig a grave:
Of solid snow, well-squared, and piled in blocks,
Brilliant as hewn from alabaster rocks,
Their palace rises, narrowing to the roof,
And freezes into marble, tempest-proof;
Night closing round, within its shade they creep,
And weary Nature sinks at once to sleep.

Oh! could we walk amidst their dreams, and see
All that they have been, are, or wish to be,
In fancy's world!—each at his own fire-side:
One greets a parent; one a new-made bride;
Another clasps his babe with fond embrace,
A smile in slumber mantling o'er his face;
All dangers are forgotten in a kiss,
Or but remember'd to exalt the bliss.
—One wounded sufferer wakes, with pain opprest,
Yet are his thoughts at home among the rest;
Then beams his eye, his heart dilated burns,
Till the dark vigil to a vision turns,
That vision to reality: and home
Is so endear'd, he vows no more to roam.

Ha! suddenly he starts: with trembling lips,
Salt shower drops, oozing through the roof, he sips:
Aware that instant, yet alarm'd too late,
—The sea hath burst its barrier, fix'd their fate;
Escape impossible: the tempests urge
Through the deep dell the inundating surge:
Nor wall nor roof the' impetuous flood controls;
Above, around, within, the deluge rolls:
He calls his comrades;—ere their doom be known,
'Tis past!—the snow-house utterly o'erthrown,
Its inmates vanish; never to be found,
Living or dead, on habitable ground.

There is a beauteous hamlet in the vale;
Green are the fields around it; sweetly sail
The twilight shadows o'er the darkening scene,
Earth, air, and ocean, all alike serene;
Dipp'd in the hues of sunset, wreathed in zones,
The clouds are resting on their mountain-thrones:
One peak alone exalts its glacier crest,
A golden paradise, above the rest;
Thither the day with lingering steps retires,
And in its own blue element expires:
Thus Aaron laid his gorgeous robes aside
On Horeb's consecrated top, and died.
The moon, meanwhile, o'er ocean's sombre bed,
New-risen, a thousand glow-worm lights hath spread;
From east to west the wildfire splendours glance,
And all the billows in her glory dance;
Till, in mid-heaven, her orb might seem the eye
Of Providence, wide-watching from the sky,
While Nature slumbers;—emblem of His grace
Whose presence fills the infinite of space.

The clouds have left the mountains; coldly bright,
Their icy summits shed cerulean light;
The steep declivities between assume
A horror of unfathomable gloom:
The village sleeps;—from house to house, the ear
Of yonder sentinel no sound can hear:
A maniac;—he, while calmer heads repose,
Takes his night-round, to tell the stars his woes;
Woes which his noble heart to frenzy stung;
—He hath no bard, and they remain unsung.
A warrior once, victorious arms he bore,
And bears them still, although his wars are o'er;
For 'tis his boast, with shield and sword in hand,
To be the guardian Angel of the land.
Mark with what stern solemnity he stalks,
And to himself, as to a legion, talks:
Now deep in council with his chiefs; anon
He starts, as at the trumpet; leads them on,
And wins the day;—his battle-shout alarms
None but the infant in the nurse's arms;
Soon hush'd, but closer to her side, it sleeps;
While he abroad his watch in silence keeps.

At every door he halts, and brings a sigh,
But leaves a blessing, when he marches by:
He stops; from that low roof a deadly groan
Hath made unutterable anguish known;
A spirit into eternity hath pass'd;
A spouse, a father, there hath breathed his last.
The widow and her little ones weep not;
In its excess their misery is forgot,
One dumb, dark moment;—then from all their eyes
Rain the salt tears, and loud their wailings rise:
Ah! little think that family forlorn
How brief the parting;—they shall meet ere morn!
For lo! the witness of their pangs hath caught
A sight that startles madness into thought:
Back from their gate unconsciously he reels;
A resurrection of his soul he feels.
There is a motion in the air: his eye
Blinks as it fear'd the falling of the sky.
The splendid peak of adamantine ice,
At sunset like an earthly paradise,
And in the moon of such empyrean hue,
It seem'd to bring the unseen world to view;
—That splendid peak, the Power (which to the spheres
Had piled its turrets through a thousand years)
Touches as lightly as the passing wind,
And the huge mass, o'erbalanced, undermined,
And dislocated from its base of snow,
Slides down the slope, majestically slow,
Till, o'er the precipice down headlong sent,
And in ten thousand thousand spangles rent,
It piles a hill where spread a vale before:
—From rock to rock the echoes round the shore
Tell with their deep artillery the fate
Of the whole village crush'd beneath its weight.
—The sleepers wake,—their homes in ruins hurl'd,—
They wake—from death into another world.
The gazing maniac, palsied into stone,
Amidst the wreck of ice, survives alone;
A sudden interval of reason gleams,
Steady and clear, amidst his wildering dreams,
But shows reality in such a shape,
'Twere rapture back to frenzy to escape.

Again the clouds of desolation roll,
Blotting all old remembrance from his soul:
Whate'er his sorrows or his joys have been,
His spirit grows embodied through this scene;
With eyes of agony, and clenching hands,
Fix'd in recoil, a frozen form he stands,
And, smit with wonder at his people's doom,
Becomes the monument upon their tomb.

Behold a scene, magnificent and new;
Nor land nor water meet the' excursive view;
The round horizon girds one frozen plain,
The mighty tombstone of the buried main,
Where, dark and silent, and unfelt to flow,
A dead sea sleeps with all its tribes below.
But heaven is still itself; the deep-blue sky
Comes down with smiles to meet the glancing eye,
Though, if a keener sight its bound would trace,
The arch recedes through everlasting space.
The sun, in morning glory, mounts his throne,
Nor shines he here in solitude unknown;
North, south, and west, by dogs or reindeer drawn,
Careering sledges cross the' unbroken lawn,
And bring, from bays and forelands round the coast,
Youth, beauty, valour, Greenland's proudest boast,
Who thus, in winter's long and social reign,
Hold feasts and tournaments upon the main,
When, built of solid floods, his bridge extends
A highway o'er the gulf to meeting friends,
Whom rocks impassable, or winds and tide,
Fickle and false, in summer months divide.

The scene runs round with motion, rings with mirth,
—No happier spot upon the peopled earth;
The drifted snow to dust the travellers beat,
The' uneven ice is flint beneath their feet.
Here tents, a gay encampment, rise around,
Where music, song, and revelry resound;
There the blue smoke upwreathes a hundred spires,
Where humbler groups have lit their pine-wood fires.
Ere long they quit the tables; knights and dames
Lead the blithe multitude to boisterous games.
Bears, wolves, and lynxes yonder head the chase;
Here start the harness'd reindeer in the race;
Borne without wheels, a flight of rival cars
Track the ice-firmament, like shooting stars,
Right to the goal,—converging as they run,
They dwindle through the distance into one.
Where smoother waves have form'd a sea of glass,
With pantomimic change the skaters pass;
Now toil like ships 'gainst wind and stream; then wheel
Like flames blown suddenly asunder; reel
Like drunkards; then, dispersed in tangents wide,
Away with speed invisible they glide.
Peace in their hearts, death-weapons in their hands,
Fierce in mock-battle meet fraternal bands,
Whom the same chiefs erewhile to conflict led,
When friends by friends, by kindred kindred, bled.
Here youthful rings with pipe and drum advance,
And foot the mazes of the giddy dance;
Gray-beard spectators, with illumined eye,
Lean on their staves, and talk of days gone by;
Children, who mimic all, from pipe and drum
To chase and battle, dream of years to come.
Those years to come, the young shall ne'er behold;
The days gone by, no more rejoice the old.

There is a boy, a solitary boy,
Who takes no part in all this whirl of joy,
Yet, in the speechless transport of his soul,
He lives, and moves, and breathes throughout the whole:
Him should destruction spare, the plot of earth,
That forms his play-ground, gave a poet birth,
Who, on the wings of his immortal lays,
Thine heroes, Greenland! to the stars shall raise.
It must not be:—abruptly from the show
He turns his eyes; his thoughts are gone below
To sound the depths of ocean, where his mind
Creates the wonders which it cannot find.
Listening, as oft he listens in a shell
To the mock tide's alternate fall and swell,
He kneels upon the ice,—inclines his ear,
And hears,—or does he only seem to hear?—
A sound, as though the Genius of the deep
Heaved a long sigh, awaking out of sleep.
He starts;—'twas but a pulse within his brain!
No;—for he feels it beat through every vein;
Groan following groan, (as from a giant's breast,
Beneath a burying mountain, ill at rest,)
With awe ineffable his spirit thrills,
And rapture fires his blood, while terror chills.
The keen expression of his eye alarms
His mother; she hath caught him in her arms,
And learn'd the cause;—that cause no sooner known,
From lip to lip o'er many a league is flown;

Voices to voices, prompt as signals, rise
In shrieks of consternation to the skies:
Those skies, meanwhile, with gathering darkness scowl;
Hollow and winterly the bleak winds howl.
—From morn till noon had ether smiled serene,
Save one black-belted cloud, far eastward seen,
Like a snow-mountain;—there in ambush lay
The' undreaded tempest, panting for his prey:
That cloud by stealth hath through the welkin spread,
And hangs in meteor-twilight over-head;
At foot, beneath the adamantine floor,
Loose in their prison-house the surges roar:
To every eye, ear, heart, the' alarm is given,
And landward crowds, (like flocks of sea-fowl driven,
When storms are on the wing,) in wild affright,
On foot, in sledges, urge their panic flight,
In hope the refuge of the shore to gain
Ere the disruption of the struggling main,
Foretold by many a stroke, like lightning sent
In thunder, through the' unstable continent,
Which now, elastic on the swell below,
Rolls high in undulation to and fro.
Men, reindeer, dogs, the giddy impulse feel,
And, jostling headlong, back and forward reel:
While snow, sleet, hail, or whirling gusts of wind,
Exhaust, bewilder, stop the breath, and blind.
All is dismay and uproar; some have found
Death for deliverance, as they leap'd on ground
Swept back into the flood:—but hope is vain:
Ere half the fugitives the beach can gain,
The fix'd ice, severing from the shore, with shocks
Of earthquake violence, bounds against the rocks;
Then suddenly, while on the verge they stand,
The whole recoils for ever from the land,
And leaves a gulf of foam along the shore,
In which whoever plunge are seen no more.

Ocean, meanwhile, abroad hath burst the roof
That sepulchred his waves; he bounds aloof.
In boiling cataracts, as volcanoes spout
Their fiery fountains, gush the waters out;
The frame of ice with dire explosion rends,
And down the' abyss the mingled crowd descends.
Heaven! from this closing horror hide thy light;
Cast thy thick mantle o'er it, gracious Night!
These screams of mothers with their infants lost,
These groans of agony from wretches tost
On rocks and whirlpools,—in thy storms be drown'd,
The crash of mountain-ice to atoms ground,
And rage of elements!—while winds, that yell
Like demons, peal the universal knell,
The shrouding waves around their limbs shall spread,
“And Darkness be the burier of the dead.”
Their pangs are o'er:—at morn the tempests cease,
And the freed ocean rolls himself to peace;
Broad to the sun his heaving breast expands,
He holds his mirror to a hundred lands;
While cheering gales pursue the eager chase
Of billows round immeasurable space.

Where are the multitudes of yesterday?
At morn they came; at eve they pass'd away.
Yet some survive;—yon castellated pile
Floats on the surges, like a fairy isle:
Pre-eminent upon its peak, behold,
With walls of amethyst and roofs of gold,
The semblance of a city; towers and spires
Glance in the firmament with opal fires:
Prone from those heights pellucid fountains flow
O'er pearly meads, through emerald vales below.
No lovelier pageant moves beneath the sky,
Nor one so mournful to the nearer eye;
Here, when the bitterness of death had pass'd
O'er others, with their sledge and reindeer cast,
Five wretched ones, in dumb despondence wait
The lingering issue of a nameless fate;
A bridal party:—mark yon reverend sage
In the brown vigour of autumnal age;
His daughter in her prime; the youth, who won
Her love by miracles of prowess done;

With these, two meet companions of their joy,
Her younger sister, and a gallant boy,
Who hoped, like him, a gentle heart to gain
By valorous enterprise on land or main.
—These, when the ocean-pavement fail'd their feet,
Sought on a glacier's crags a safe retreat;
But in the shock, from its foundation torn,
That mass is slowly o'er the waters borne,
An iceberg!—on whose verge all day they stand,
And eye the blank horizon's ring for land.
All night around a dismal flame they weep;
Their sledge, by piecemeal, lights the hoary deep.
Morn brings no comfort: at her dawn expire
The latest embers of their latest fire;
For warmth and food the patient reindeer bleeds,
Happier in death than those he warms and feeds.
—How long, by that precarious raft upbuoy'd,
They blindly drifted on a shoreless void;
How long they suffer'd, or how soon they found
Rest in the gulf, or peace on living ground;
—Whether, by hunger, cold, and grief consumed,
They perish'd miserably—and, unentomb'd,
(While on that frigid bier their corses lay,)
Became the sea-fowl's or the sea-bear's prey;
—Whether the wasting mound, by swift degrees,
Exhaled in mist and vanish'd from the seas,
While they, too weak to struggle even in death,
Lock'd in each other's arms resign'd their breath,
And their white skeletons, beneath the wave,
Lie intertwined in one sepulchral cave;
—Or meeting some Norwegian bark at sea,
They deem'd its deck a world of liberty;
—Or, sunward sailing, on green Erin's sod
They kneel'd, and worshipp'd a delivering God,
Where yet the blood they brought from Greenland runs
Among the noblest of our sister's sons,
—Is all unknown:—their iceberg disappears
Amidst the flood of unreturning years.

Ages are fled; and Greenland's hour draws nigh;
Seal'd is the judgment; all her race must die:
Commerce forsakes the' unvoyageable seas,
That year by year with keener rigour freeze;
The embargoed waves in narrower channels roll
To blue Spitzbergen and the utmost pole:
A hundred colonies, erewhile that lay
On the green marge of many a shelter'd bay,
Lapse to the wilderness; their tenants throng
Where streams in summer, turbulent and strong,
With molten ice from inland Alps supplied,
Hold free communion with the breathing tide,
That from the heart of ocean sends the flood
Of living water round the world, like blood:
But Greenland's pulse shall slow and slower beat,
Till the last spark of genial warmth retreat,
And, like a palsied limb of Nature's frame,
Greenland be nothing but a place and name.
That crisis comes: the wafted fuel fails;
The cattle perish; famine long prevails;
With torpid sloth, intenser seasons bind
The strength of muscle and the spring of mind;
Man droops, his spirits waste, his powers decay,
—His generation soon shall pass away.

At moonless midnight, on this naked coast,
How beautiful in heaven the starry host!
With lambent brilliance o'er these cloister-walls,
Slant from the firmament a meteor falls;
A steadier flame from yonder beacon streams,
To light the vessel, seen in golden dreams
By many a pining wretch, whose slumbers feign
The bliss for which he looks at morn in vain.
Two years are gone, and half expired a third,
(The nation's heart is sick with hope deferr'd,)
Since last for Europe sail'd a Greenland prow,
Her whole marine,—so shorn is Greenland now,
Though once, like clouds in ether unconfined,
Her naval wings were spread to every wind.
The monk who sits, the weary hours to count,
In the lone block-house on the beacon-mount,
Watching the east, beholds the morning star
Eclipsed at rising o'er the waves afar,
As if—for so would fond expectance think—
A sail had cross'd it on the' horizon's brink.
His fervent soul, in ecstasy outdrawn,
Glows with the shadows kindling through the dawn,

Till every bird that flashes through the brine
Appears an arm'd and gallant brigantine;
And every sound along the air that comes,
The voice of clarions and the roll of drums.
—'Tis she! 'tis she! the well-known keel at last,
With Greenland's banner streaming at the mast;
The full-swoln sails, the spring-tide, and the breeze,
Waft on her way the pilgrim of the seas.
The monks at matins, issuing from their cells,
Spread the glad tidings; while their convent-bells
Wake town and country, sea and shore, to bliss
Unknown for years on any morn but this.
Men, women, children, throng the joyous strand,
Whose mob of moving shadows o'er the sand
Lengthen to giants, while the hovering sun
Lights up a thousand radiant points from one.
The pilots launch their boasts:—a race! a race!
The strife of oars is seen in every face;
Arm against arm puts forth its might to reach,
And guide the welcome stranger to the beach.
—Shouts from the shore, the cliffs, the boats, arise;
No voice, no signal, from the ship replies;
Nor on the deck, the yards, the bow, the stern,
Can keenest eye a human form discern.
Oh! that those eyes were open'd, there to see
How, in serene and dreadful majesty,
Sits the destroying Angel at the helm!
—He, who hath lately march'd from realm to realm,
And, from the palace to the peasant's shed,
Made all the living kindred to the dead:
Nor man alone,—dumb nature felt his wrath,
Drought, mildew, murrain, strew'd his carnage-path;
Harvest and vintage cast their timeless fruit,
Forests before him wither'd from the root.
To Greenland now, with unexhausted power,
He comes commission'd; and in evil hour
Propitious elements prepare his way;
His day of landing is a festal day.

A boat arrives;—to those who scale the deck,
Of life appears but one disastrous wreck!
Fall'n from the rudder, which he fain had grasp'd,
But stronger Death his wrestling hold unclasp'd,
The film of darkness freezing o'er his eyes,
A lukewarm corpse, the brave commander lies;
Survivor sole of all his buried crew,
Whom one by one the rife contagion slew,
Just when the cliffs of Greenland cheer'd his sight,
Even from their pinnacle his soul took flight.
Chill'd at the spectacle, the pilots gaze
One on another, lost in blank amaze;
But, from approaching boats when rivals throng,
They seize the helm, in silence steer along,
And cast their anchor, 'midst exulting cries,
That make the rocks the echoes of the skies,
Till the mysterious signs of woes to come,
Circled by whispers, strike the uproar dumb.
Rumour affirms, that by some heinous spell
Of Lapland witches, crew and captain fell;
None guess the secret of perfidious fate,
Which all shall know too soon,—yet know too late.

The monks, who claim the ship, divide the stores
Of food and raiment at their convent-doors.
—A mother, hastening to her cheerless shed,
Breaks to her little ones untasted bread;
Clamorous as nestling-birds, the hungry band
Receive a mortal portion at her hand:
On each would equal love the best confer,
Each by distinct affection dear to her;
One the first pledge that to her spouse she gave,
And one unborn till he was in his grave;
This was his darling, that to her most kind;
A fifth was once a twin, the sixth is blind:
In each she lives;—in each by turns she dies;
Smitten by pestilence before her eyes,
Three days, and all are slain;—the heaviest doom
Is hers: their ice-barr'd cottage is their tomb.
—The wretch whose limbs are impotent with cold,
In the warm comfort of a mantle roll'd,
Lies down to slumber on his soul's desire;
But wakes at morn, as wrapt in flames of fire:
Not Hercules, when from his breast he tore
The cloak envenom'd with the Centaur's gore,
Felt sharper pangs than he, who, mad with rage,
Dives in the gulf, or rolls in snow, to' assuage
His quenchless agony; the rankling dart
Within him burns till it consumes his heart.
From vale to vale the' affrighted victims fly,
But catch or give the plague with every sigh;
A touch contaminates the purest veins,
Till the Black Death through all the region reigns.

Comes there no ship again to Greenland's shore?
There comes another:—there shall come no more;
Nor this shall reach an haven:—What are these
Stupendous monuments upon the seas?
Works of Omnipotence, in wondrous forms,
Immovable as mountains in the storms?
Far as Imagination's eye can roll,
One range of Alpine glaciers to the pole
Flanks the whole eastern coast; and, branching wide,
Arches o'er many a league the indignant tide,
That works and frets, with unavailing flow,
To mine a passage to the beach below;
Thence from its neck that winter-yoke to rend,
And down the gulf the crashing fragments send.
There lies a vessel in this realm of frost,
Not wreck'd, nor stranded, yet for ever lost:
Its keel embedded in the solid mass;
Its glistening sails appear expanded glass;
The transverse ropes with pearls enormous strung,
The yards with icicles grotesquely hung,
Wrapt in the topmost shrouds there rests a boy,
His old sea-faring father's only joy:
Sprung from a race of rovers, ocean-born,
Nursed at the helm, he trod dry land with scorn;
Through fourscore years from port to port he veer'd,
Quicksand, nor rock, nor foe, nor tempest fear'd;
Now cast ashore, though like a hulk he lie,
His son at sea is ever in his eye,
And his prophetic thought, from age to age,
Esteems the waves his offspring's heritage:
He ne'er shall know, in his Norwegian cot,
How brief that son's career, how strange his lot;
Writhed round the mast, and sepulchred in air,
Him shall no worm devour, no vulture tear;
Congeal'd to adamant, his frame shall last,
Though empires change, till time and tide be past.

On deck, in groups embracing as they died,
Singly, erect, or slumbering side by side,
Behold the crew!—They sail'd, with hope elate,
For eastern Greenland; till, ensnared by fate,
In toils that mock'd their utmost strength and skill,
They felt, as by a charm, their ship stand still:
The madness of the wildest gale that blows
Were mercy to that shudder of repose,
When withering horror struck from heart to heart
The blunt rebound of Death's benumbing dart,
And each, a petrifaction at his post,
Look'd on yon father, and gave up the ghost:
He, meekly kneeling, with his hands upraised,
His beard of driven snow, eyes fix'd and glazed,
Alone among the dead shall yet survive,
—The' imperishable dead, that seem alive;
—The' immortal dead, whose spirits, breaking free,
Bore his last words into eternity,
While with a seraph's zeal, a Christian's love,
Till his tongue fail'd, he spoke of joys above.
Now motionless, amidst the icy air,
He breathes from marble lips unutter'd prayer.
The clouds condensed, with dark unbroken hue
Of stormy purple, overhang his view,
Save in the west, to which he strains his sight,
One golden streak, that grows intensely bright,
Till thence the' emerging sun, with lightning blaze,
Pours the whole quiver of his arrowy rays;
The smitten rocks to instant diamond turn,
And round the' expiring saint such visions burn
As if the gates of Paradise were thrown
Wide open to receive his soul;—'tis flown:
The glory vanishes, and over all
Cimmerian darkness spreads her funeral pall!

Morn shall return, and noon, and eve, and night
Meet here with interchanging shade and light:
But from this bark no timber shall decay,
Of these cold forms no feature pass away;
Perennial ice around the' encrusted bow,
The peopled deck, and full-rigg'd masts, shall grow,
Till from the sun himself the whole be hid,
Or spied beneath a crystal pyramid;
As in pure amber, with divergent lines,
A rugged shell emboss'd with sea-weed shines.
From age to age increased with annual snow,
This new Mont Blanc among the clouds may glow,
Whose conic peak, that earliest greets the dawn,
And latest from the sun's shut eye withdrawn,

Shall from the zenith, through incumbent gloom,
Burn like a lamp upon this naval tomb.
But when the' archangel's trumpet sounds on high,
The pile shall burst to atoms through the sky,
And leave its dead, upstarting at the call,
Naked and pale, before the Judge of all.

Once more to Greenland's long-forsaken beach,
Which foot of man again shall never reach,
Imagination wings her flight, explores
The march of Pestilence along the shores,
And sees how Famine in his steps hath paced,
While Winter laid the soil for ever waste.
Dwellings are heaps of fall'n or falling stones,
The charnel-houses of unburied bones,
On which obscene and prowling monsters fed,
But, with the ravin in their jaws, fell dead.
Thus while Destruction, blasting youth and age,
Raged till it wanted victims for its rage,—
Love, the last feeling that from life retires,
Blew the faint sparks of his unfuell'd fires.
In the cold sunshine of yon narrow dell
Affection lingers;—there two lovers dwell,
Greenland's whole family: nor long forlorn;
There comes a visitant,—a babe is born.
O'er his meek helplessness the parents smiled;
'Twas Hope;—for Hope is every mother's child:
Then seem'd they, in that world of solitude,
The Eve and Adam of a race renew'd.
Brief happiness! too perilous to last;
The moon hath wax'd and waned, and all is past:
Behold the end:—one morn, athwart the wall,
They mark'd the shadow of a reindeer fall,
Bounding in tameless freedom o'er the snow;
The father track'd him, and with fatal bow
Smote down the victim; but before his eyes,
A rabid she-bear pounced upon the prize;
A shaft into the spoiler's flank he sent,
She turn'd in wrath, and limb from limb had rent
The hunter,—but his dagger's plunging steel
With riven bosom made the monster reel;
Unvanquish'd, both to closer combat flew,
Assailants each, till each the other slew:
Mingling their blood from mutual wounds, they lay
Stretch'd on the carcass of their antler'd prey.

Meanwhile his partner waits, her heart at rest,
No burden but her infant on her breast.
With him she slumbers, or with him she plays,
And tells him all her dreams of future days,
Asks him a thousand questions, feigns replies,
And reads whate'er she wishes in his eyes.
—Red evening comes; no husband's shadow falls
Where fell the reindeer's o'er the latticed walls:
'Tis night; no footstep sounds towards her door:
The day returns,—but he returns no more.
In frenzy, forth she sallies; and with cries,
To which no voice except her own replies
In frightful echoes, starting all around,
Where human voice again shall never sound,
She seeks him, finds him not: some angel-guide
In mercy turns her from the corpse aside;
Perhaps his own freed spirit, lingering near,
Who waits to waft her to a happier sphere,
But leads her first, at evening, to their cot,
Where lies the little one, all day forgot;
Imparadised in sleep she finds him there,
Kisses his cheek, and breathes a mother's prayer.
Three days she languishes, nor can she shed
One tear, between the living and the dead:
When her lost spouse comes o'er the widow's thought,
The pangs of memory are to madness wrought;
But when her suckling's eager lips are felt,
Her heart would fain—but oh! it cannot—melt;
At length it breaks, while on her lap he lies,
With baby-wonder gazing in her eyes.
Poor orphan! mine is not a hand to trace
Thy little story, last of all thy race!
Not long thy sufferings; cold and colder grown,
The arms that clasp thee chill thy limbs to stone.
—'Tis done:—from Greenland's coast, the latest sigh
Bore infant innocence beyond the sky.