The Arctic Queen | Page 5

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 men?Who roam the prisons of our underworld,?Pray, how can we distinguish? Would'st thou search??Thou hast the liberty. We will not lay?The slightest new obstruction in thy way;?And this is mercy which we did not deem?We should extend towards an enemy.?We do not comprehend that strange excess?Of passion which hath