Classic Poem

A FEARLESS shape of brave device,
Our vessel drives through mist and rain,
Between the floating fleets of ice—
The navies of the northern main.

These Arctic ventures, blindly hurled,
The proofs of Nature's olden force,
Like fragments of a crystal world
Long shattered from its skyey course—

These are the buccaneers that fright
The middle sea with dream of wrecks,
And freeze the south winds in their flight,
And chain the Gulf-stream to their decks.

At every dragon prow and helm
There stands some Viking, as of yore:
Grim heroes from the boreal realm
Where Odin rules the spectral shore.

And oft beneath the sun or moon
Their swift and eager falchions glow,
While, like a storm-vexed wind, the rune
Comes chafing through some beard of snow.

And when the far North flashes up,
With fires of mingled red and gold,
They know that many a blazing cup
Is brimming to the absent bold.

Up signal there! and let us hail
Yon looming phantom as we pass!
Note all her fashion, hull and sail,
Within the compass of your glass.

See at her mast the steadfast glow
Of that one star of Odin's throne:
Up with our flag! and let us show
The constellation on our own.

And speak her well; for she might say,
If from her heart the words could thaw,
Great news from some far frozen bay,
Or the remotest Esquimaux:

Might tell of channels yet untold,
That sweep the pole from sea to sea;
Of lands which God designs to hold
A mighty people yet to be;

Of wonders which alone prevail
Where day and darkness dimly meet;
Of all which spreads the Arctic sail;
Of Franklin, and his venturous fleet:

How, haply, at some glorious goal
His anchor holds, his sails are furled;
That Fame has named him on her scroll
“Columbus of the Polar world!”

Or how his ploughing barks wedge on
Through splintering fields, with battered shares,
Lit only by that spectral dawn,
The mask that mocking darkness wears;

Or how, o'er embers black and few,
The last of shivered masts and spars,
He sits amid his frozen crew,
In council with the norland stars.

No answer—but the sullen flow
Of ocean, heaving long and vast;
An argosy of ice and snow,
The voiceless North swings proudly past.