The Arctic Queen | Page 5

a clinging mass of shell-wreathed hair,
Peering upon me with
strange, smiling eyes.
Gay fishes, in the sunlight gleaming, swam

With playful fires of evanescent hues;
And birds did sometimes rest
their weary wings
Upon my shoulder, pecking at the fruit
Which I
did share with them, though small my store.
"Thus on and on continuous days I fled;
No wind came now, blowing
from flowery shores,
At times to startle me with dreams of home;

No more bewildering songs rose all the night
Around me; nor
familiar faces glanced
An instant from the deep; nor long, fair fingers

Hung on the gilded prow.
"The Temperate Zone
Had floated by like a long stream of gold;

The Arctics lay before me, vast and drear;
The sea was green and
rough; no gay fish darted
Like silver arrows from the quivering wave;

But monsters, with thick scales and hideous eyes,
Looked sullenly
up in stupid wonderment,
While some swam to'ards me, with
rapacious maws
Sharp-fanged and bloody, and exulting fins

Flapping with demon slowness their huge sides;--
And still I passed
unhurt.

"Once round my boat
For many hours an old sea-dragon hovered.

His huge folds lay like rainbows on the sea,
And his two eyes, like
suns, resplendent shone.
He seemed to guard thy realm, O, mighty
Queen!
And, with the cunning power of those large eyes,
To awe
intruders from thy frozen world.
So fearlessly my gaze repelled his
own
I charmed this wary dragon of the North;
The eyes that erst
had sparkled goldenly
With a malicious and infatuous brightness,

Grew lost and dreaming in a vacant splendor;
The rainbow lustre of
his lengthening folds
Faded to harmless green, till, prone, he lay,
A
floating dream of dread, upon the deep;
Then, with the noiseless
current drifting on,
I passed your subtle guardian swiftly by;
While
only one faint sparkle, green and gold,
Broke from his sluggish sides
as I swept past.
"The grandeur of your floating towers of ice
Stole on my sight; the
sea rolled rough; the air
Was sharp and clear; and yet this delicate
robe
Was all sufficient to resist its power.
Soon, upon every side, I
saw tall bergs.
A child of fragrant airs and sunny skies,
Enervate
with the South's soft luxuries,
These icebergs burst upon me like a
sense
Newly received, revealing God anew.
While in the distance,
calmly floating on
Through the broad sunlight, then I loved to dream

That they were palaces upreared by gnomes,
With glittering towers
and silver pinnacles,--
That in them were expanded halls of light--

Vast chambers--with such gorgeous, fretted roofs
And shining floors,
as wearied human sight;
That fountains filled them with a slumberous
sound;
And curtains, wrought of silver-threaded frost,
Were looped
with priceless pearls from room to room;--
A home for all the spirits
of the Good
Lost in the pitiless sea,--where they would bathe
Their
thoughts in heaven's splendor, looking out
The golden windows
towards the constant sun,
Shining, unceasing, slant against their
brows.
"But, as I nearer drew, I lost that dream
In one more gloomy. They

did seem to shape
Themselves to living giants; lifting high
Their
frowning foreheads, crowned with fiery crowns.
As lower sank the
sun towards the sea,
Gloomier did they grow, with their white hair

And lifted spears, walking with mighty steps
The creaking floor of
the unsteady deep.--
Nodding defiantly at one another--
Meeting,
with crashing spears and splintered shields,
With hoarse cries, breast
to breast, in angry strife;
Their armor shivered at their feet, the sea

Broken beneath their tread and shuddering
At the great shock.
"More thick these terrors grew;
Broad fields stretched out in many a
frozen ridge;
While far beyond were paths of printless snow.
The
ocean lay behind; and yet my boat
Moved ever onward, up a watery
isle,
Opening, like a deep river, through the ice.
A shadowy land
spread out on either side,
Where, moveless as some black and
brooding bird,
Night hovered, silent, vast, and wonderful.
Thy
Heralds, the North-Lights, did startle me
Into new wonder by their
glowing shapes,
Swift rushing down the sky, those phantasms wild,

Flushing, and paling in their measureless speed.
"At length I drifted into a new sea,
Where all was calm and warm,
and where no tower
Of ragged ice upreared itself. On, on
I floated,
while some lovely fantasy
Seemed stealing my true sense--so fair the
scene.
Huge lillies, which no tropic land might boast,
Slept on the
water--like embodied moonlight;
A mellow lustre bathed all things;
sweet birds
With rainbow plumage fluttered through the air,
And
this fair island dawned upon my sight.
Soon on the shore rested my
vessel's prow,
And I, ascending the bright paths which spread

Through bowers of wond'rous beauty, came to thee,
The central light
of all this loveliness.
This is my sin, if thou wilt judge it such.
But
love, the fondest that did ever throb
In the warm heart of any mortal
maid,
It was, which brought me. It must be, sweet Queen
That
somewhere in thy mystical domains
My BERTHO dwells. Do'st
know him? Is he well?
And does he for his fond-eyed OLIVE look,


With hollow shadows underneath his brows
From too much
watching?"
OENE answered back
The eager pleading of her glance with one
Of
chilly calmness, as she thus replied:--
"There is no living mortal in my realms,
Save thou alone, the first
who ever came.
Thy BERTHO, from a thousand shades of