Their woes combining, wither'd from the carth
This late creation, like a timeless birth,
The fruit of age and weakness, forced to light,
Breathing awhile, -- relapsing into night.

Ages had seen the vigorous race, that sprung From Norway's stormy forelands, rock'd when young In ocean's cradle, hardening as they rose, Like mountain-pines amidst perennial snows; Ages had seen these sturdiest sons of Time Strike root and flourish in that ruffian clime, Commerce with lovelier lands and wealthier hold, Yet spurn the lures of luxury and gold; Beneath the umbrage of the Gallic vine, For moonlight snows and cavern-shelter pine; Turn from Campanian fields a lofty eye To gaze upon the glorious Alps, and sigh, Remembering Greenland; more and more endear'd, As far and further from its shores they steer'd; Greenland their world, and all was strange beside; Elsewhere they wander'd: here they lived and died.

At length a swarthy tribe, without a name, Unknown the point of windward whence they came; The power by which stupendous gulfs they cross'd, Or compass'd wilds of everlasting frost, Alike mysterious;-found their sudden way To Greenland; pour'd along the western bay Their straggling families; and seized the soil For their domain, the ocean for their spoil.

Skraellings the Normans call'd these hordes in scorn,
That seem'd created on the spot, though born
In trans-Atlantic climes, and thither brought
By paths as covert as the birth of thought;
They were at once; the swallow-tribes in spring
Thus daily multiply upon the wing,

As if the air, their element of flight,

Brought forth new broods from darkness every night;

Slipt from the secret hand of Providence,

They come we see not how, nor know we whence.*

A stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock,
Hewn from the living marble of the rock,
Or sprung from mermaids, and in ocean's bed,
With orcs and seals, in sunless caverns bred,
They might have held, from unrecorded time,
Sole patrimony in that hideous clime,

So lithe their limbs, so fenced their frames to bear
The intensest rigors of the polar air;
Nimble, and muscular, and keen to run
The rein-deer down a circuit of the sun;

To climb the slippery cliffs, explore their cells,
And storm and sack the sea-birds' citadels;
In bands, through snows, the mother-bear to trace,
Slay with their darts the cubs in her embrace,
And, while she lick'd their bleeding wounds, to

brave

Her deadliest vengeance in her inmost cave:

* See note (I) of the Appendix.

Train'd with inimitable skill to float,

Each, balanced in his bubble of a boat,

With dexterous paddle steering through the spray,
With poised harpoon to strike his plunging prey,
As though the skiff, the seaman, oar, and dart
Were one compacted body, by one heart
With instinct, motion, pulse, empower'd to ride
A human Nautilus upon the tide;

Or with a fleet of Kayaks to assail

The desperation of the stranded whale,

When wedged 'twixt jagged rocks he writhes and rolls In agony among the ebbing shoals,

Lashing the waves to foam, until the flood,

From wounds, like geysers, seems a bath of blood, Echo all night dumb-pealing to his roar,

Till morn beholds him slain along the shore.

Of these,hereafter should the lyre be strung To arctic themes, may glorious days be sung; Now be our task the sad reverse to tell, How in their march the nobler Normans fell; *

* The incidents alluded to in this clause are presumed to have occasioned the extinction of the Norwegian colonists on the western coast of Greenland. Crantz says, that there is a district on Ball's river, called Pissiksarbik, or the place of arrows; where it is believed, that the Skraellings and Norwegians fought a battle, in which the latter were defeated. The modern Greenlanders affirm, that the name is derived from the circumstance of the parties having shot their arrows at one another from opposite banks of the stream. Many rudera, or ruins of ancient buildings, principally supposed to have been churches, are found along the coast from Disko Bay to Cape Farewell.

Whether by dire disease, that turn'd the breath
Of bounteous heaven to pestilence and death,
In number, strength, and spirit worn away,
Their lives became the cool assassin's prey;

Or in the battle-field, as Skraellings boast,
These pigmies put to flight their giant-host,
When front to front on scowling cliffs they stood,
And shot their barbs athwart the parting flood;
Arrow smote arrow, dart encounter'd dart,
From hand to hand, impaling heart for heart;
Till spent their missiles: quick as in a dream
The images are changed; across the stream
The Skraellings rush'd, the precipices scaled;

- O'erwhelm'd by multitudes, the Normans fail'd:
A scatter'd remnant to the south retired,
But one by one along their route expired:
They perish'd;- History can no more relate
Of their obscure and unlamented fate :

They perish'd; yet along that western shore,
Where Commerce spread her colonies of yore,
Ruins of temples and of homes are traced,

Steps of magnificence amidst the waste

Where Time hath trod, and left those wrecks to show

That Life hath been, where all is death below.

END OF CANTO IV.

CANTO FIFTH.

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,
Enamor❜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;