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"St. Lawrence! yes, I well remember
Thy Gulf—that morning in September.—
Fast flew our Ship careering lightly
Over the waters breaking brightly;
page 76 Alongside close as if their aim
Were but her vaunted speed to shame,
Sleek, porpoises like lightening went
Cleaving the sunny element;
Now where the black bows smote their way
How would they revel in the roaring spray!
Like victors in the contest now
Dash swift athwart the flying prow;
Or springing forward three abreast
Shoot slippery o'er each foamy crest—
Shoot upwards in an airy arc
As three abreast they passed the bark:—
Pied petrels coursed about the sea
And skimmed the billows dexterously;
Sank with each hollow, rose with every hill,
So close, yet never touched them till
They seized their prey with rapid bill:—
Afar, the cloudy spurts of spray
Told that the grampus sported there
With his ferocious mates at play.
Meanwhile the breeze that freshly blew
From every breaking wavetop drew
A plume of smoke that straightway from the sun
The colours of the rainbow won,
So that you saw wherever turning
A thousand small volcanoes burning.
Emitting vapours of each hue
Of orange, purple, red and blue.
The Sky meanwhile was all alive
With snow-bright clouds that seemed to drive
Swiftly, as though the Heavens in glee
Were racing with the racing Sea:
Each flitting sight and rushing sound
Spread life and hope and joy around;
page 77 Ship, birds and fishes, Sky and ocean
All restless with one glad emotion!—
But what a change! when suddenly we spy
Apart from all that headlong revelry—
Pencilled above the sky-line, like a Spectre drear,
A silent Iceberg solemnly appear,—
Pausing ghost-like our greeting to a wait.—
The crystal Mountain, as we come a near
And feel the airs that from it creep
So chilling o'er the sunny Deep,
Discloses—while it slowly shifts
Now blue, faint-glistening semilucent clifts,
Now melancholy peaks, dead-white and desolate,
But comes it not, this guest unbidden
This wanderer from a home far-hidden,
Dim herald of the mysteries of the Pole
With tidings from that cheerless region fraught—
Comes it not o'er us like the sudden Thought,
The haunting phantom of a World apart,
The blank and silent Apparition
That, ever prompt to gain serene admission,
Lurks on the crowded confines of the heart,
The many-pictured purlieus of the Soul;
Nay, sometimes thrusts its unexpected presence
Upon our brightest tinted hours of pleasaunce?—
That Polar realm is ransacked—known—
And all the World of Matter, still
Lies pervious to determined will:
And shall the World of Spirit never
Its secrets yield to true endeavour?—
Five thousand years have doubtless shown
But little of that Spirit-zone:
For Science is a Child as yet
At hornbook rude and primer set:
page 78 And Man is just emerging from the past
Eternity of Darkness; from the vast
Æons and ages of a measureless Night,
Rubbing his eyes at the unwonted light:
How should he read all things aright
And say what can or cannot be—or utter
Out of his heart the Universe, whose growth
And whole existence yet is but the flutter
Of an ephemeral water-moth?
Take fifty thousand years—a span
In the conceivable career of Man;
Think you, with riper knowledge—skill profounder—
No grand explorers, bolder, sounder,
Will break into that Spirit-zone—reveal
Not iron-bound realms of ruthless ice and snow
Or narrow straits where freezing waters flow,
No shooting lights, or shifting gleams—
But prospects trustier than the dance and play
Protean of those dumb magnetic storms—
Auroras lovelier than our sanguine dreams
Of fondest Inspiration—Forms
Of Being more essentially divine
Than all that in Thought's topmost triumphs shine?
And prove how real the region whence our stray
And shadowy intimations find their way;
With what true signs and tokens rife
Those glimmering dreams and fine forebodings steal
Into the circle of our little day,
Into the glad familiar Sea of Life? "