And on thy lonesome borders night
Sits brooding o'er with drooping wings.
The wind that tossed thy waves and blew Across thy breast the flowing sail,
And cheered the hearts of cheering crew
From further seas, no more prevail.
Thy white-walled cities all lie prone,
With but a pyramid, a stone,
Set head and foot in sands to tell
The tired stranger where they fell.
The patient ox that bended low
His neck, and drew slow up and down
Thy thousand freights through rock-built town,
Is now the free-born buffalo.
No longer of the timid fold,
The mountain sheep leaps free and bold
His high-built summit, and looks down
From battlements of buried town.
Thine ancient steeds know not the rein,
They lord the land, they come, they go
At will; they laugh at man, they blow
A cloud of black steeds on the plain.
Thy monuments lie buried now,
The ashes whiten on thy brow,
The winds, the waves have drawn away,
The very wild man dreads to stay.
Oh! thou art very old. I lay,
Made dumb with awe and wonderment,
Beneath a palm within my tent,
With idle and discouraged hands,
Not many days agone, on sands
Of awful, silent Africa.
Long gazing on her mighty shades,
I did recall a semblance there
Of thee. I mused where story fades
From her dark brow and found her fair.
And yet my dried-up desert sea
Was populous with blowing sail.
And set with city, white-walled town,
All manned with armies bright with mail,
Ere yet that awful Sphinx sat down
To gaze into eternity,
Or Egypt knew her natal hour,
Or Africa had name or power.
NGEL of life! thy glittering wings explore
Earth's loneliest bounds and ocean's wildest shore.
Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields
His bark careering o'er unfathomed fields;
Now on Atlantic waves he rides afar,
Where Andes, giant of the western star,
With meteor standard to the winds unfurled,
Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world.
Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles, On Behring's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles: Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow, From wastes that slumber in eternal snow; And waft, across the waves' tumultuous roar, The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore. Thomas Campbell.
HERE the short-legged Esquimaux
And the playful polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
Where by day they track the ermine,
And by night another vermin,
Segment of the frigid zone,
Where the temperature alone
Warms on St. Elias' cone;
Polar dock, where Nature slips
From the ways her icy ships;
Land of fox and deer and sable,
Shore end of our western cable,
Let the news that flying goes
Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
And reverberate the boast
From the cliffs of Beechey's coast,
Till the tidings, circling round
Every bay of Norton Sound,
Throw the vocal tide-wave back
To the isles of Kodiac.
Let the stately polar bears
Waltz around the pole in pairs,
And the walrus, in his glee,
Bare his tusk of ivory;
While the bold sea unicorn
Calmly takes an extra horn;
All ye polar skies, reveal your
Very rarest of parhelia;
Trip it, all ye merry dancers,
In the airiest of lancers;
Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide,
One inch farther to the tide,
Nor in rash precipitation
Upset Tyndall's calculation.
Know you not what fate awaits you,
Or to whom the future mates you?
All ye icebergs make salaam,
You belong to Uncle Sam !
On the spot where Eugene Sue
Led his wretched Wandering Jew,
Stands a form whose features strike
Russ and Esquimaux alike.
He it is whom Skalds of old
In their Runic rhymes foretold;
Lean of flank and lank of jaw,
See the real Northern Thor!
See the awful Yankee leering
Just across the Straits of Behring;
On the drifted snow, too plain,
Sinks his fresh tobacco stain
Just beside the deep inden-
Tation of his Number Ten.
Leaning on his icy hammer
Stands the hero of this drama,
And above the wild-duck's clamor,
In his own peculiar grammar,
With its linguistic disguises,
Lo, the Arctic prologue rises:
"Wall, I reckon 't ain't so bad,
Seein' ez 't was all they had;
True, the Springs are rather late
And early Falls predominate;
But the ice crop 's pretty sure,
And the air is kind o' pure;
'T ain't so very mean a trade,
When the land is all surveyed.
There's a right smart chance for fur-chase
All along this recent purchase,
And, unless the stories fail,
Every fish from cod to whale;
Rocks, too; mebbe quartz; let's see,
'T would be strange if there should be,-
Seems I've heerd such stories told;
Eh!--why, bless us, yes, it's gold!"
While the blows are falling thick
From his California pick,
You may recognize the Thor
Of the vision that I saw,
Freed from legendary glamour,
See the real magician's hammer.
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