The Arctic Queen | Page 8

come,?And wherefore lingering here, pleased will I listen."
A smile stole o'er his pale, storm-beaten face.--?"I know thee now, from mother Eve descended,?By thy most feminine willingness to hear,?The sorrows which did claim thy ready tears?While they were but suspected. Sit thee down.?Five years it is since, with three stately ships?And sturdy crews to man them, one proud day?I sailed away from the great three-linked isle,?Under my fair Queen's sovereign patronage,?For the far Frigid Zone--the wild, the fierce,?The unknown Arctic seas--through their cold depths,?Their intricate, unmarked, majestic ways,?To find a North-West Passage: which wise men?And skillful mariners, learned of the sea,?Suspected, through the navigator's art?Might to the world be opened. High my heart?With courage and ambition swelled its tides,?Knowledge I had and skill, with enterprise;?And should I be successful, future times?Should know my name, and future mariners?Respect my fame and emulate my deeds.?But one faint spot was there in my proud heart,?And that was where my constant wife, at parting,?Shed sorrowful tears, until they did strike through,?A fear, into my breast, that nevermore?That faithful brow should lean to it again.
"To thee, if thou indeed hast safely passed?The horrors and the beauties of the sea,?I need not tell the ever-varying scenes?Of this most fearful voyage.
"Day by day?I studied in my cabin over charts;?Or, on the deck, learned of the sea and sky?The subtle mariner's ever-changeful lore.?Prosperous we were, till o'er the mystic bounds?Of OENE's realms I sailed; save now and then?Some noble sailor of my kindly crews?With tears we left upon the bloomless shores?Where birds nor flowers should ever bless his grave.?On--on--beyond all shores--or sights of dwarfs?Slaying the rein-deer by their snow-built huts:--?On, through the thickening perils of the way!?Methought I held within my brain the clue?Through that bewildering labyrinth of ice.?For weeks the Sun, a pale and sinking ghost,?With feeble eyes had glared upon the Pole.?Nor with his wavering arrows could o'erthrow?Even the airy domes of delicate sprites,?Sitting and decking their etherial robes?And turning them, sparkling, to his sullen face.
"Now from OENE's dominions, messengers,?Borne by the flying winds, hourly arrived,?Warning me from her shores. At last the Queen,?Gathered together her enormous fleet;?It bore down upon us with such grand array?As I pray heaven never to see again.?An hundred giant ships, whose rainbow sails?And glittering masts towered a thousand feet?Above our tiny vessels, weighed their anchors?And slowly from their harbors drifted out.?We heard the creaking of their cables--heard?The shouting of their fierce and naked crews--?We saw the green sea boil against their keels--?Their viewless banners flapped against our faces--?Their viewless darts pierced us on every side?Till men fell on our decks, a stony heap.?We strove, at least, to make a brave retreat,?Toiling in mute dispair, or madly praying?The winds to favor our poor, shattered sails.?They closed around us upon every side.?Two of the largest of their avenging fleet,?Drawing together crushed in the embrace?My stoutest vessel like some frailest shell;?Then swung apart, with laughter on their decks,?Showing me, where my noble friends had been,?Only a seething gulf. The sweat of anguish?Froze into hail upon my pallid brow,?When, with another shriek of agony,?The brother ship went down. At length the winds,?Saving us only from more sudden death,?Drove us upon the rocks beneath this mount.?Five years had wasted all our store of food;?But, seeing monsters like this beast of prey,?Some of the least exhausted boldly forth?Went to destroy them--I amid the rest,--?But stupor and a drowsy sweetness came?Over our eyes, and we lay down to sleep--?Waking to hear the mocking laugh of ghouls,?To find us chained, enslaved,--and, worse than all!?Lost from our corporal bodies--spirits--dead!
"I, as the leader of the intruding band,?Am doomed to wander on this mountain side,?A century, before my restless ghost,?Freed from the thraldom of weird OENE's power,?Regains its natural liberty, and soars?Into the paradise of happy souls.?This is the punishment those mortals bear,?Who, venturing into this strange Arctic world,?Are vanquished by its sovereign. She hath power,?The source of which I know not, to retain?The souls of mortals for an hundred years,?Demanding service which they needs must pay.?The gloomy caverns underneath this mount,?And those which in the hearts of icebergs lie,?And many by the sea, are filled with those?Who work their ransom out with tedious toil.?For me--I am not put to any task--?My punishment to gaze afar and see?How cruelly all friends from distant shores,?Who dare attempt my rescue, are restrained.?Alas; the North-west Passage! When the day?Glinted o'er this pale land, before my sight?In devious tracery that Passage lay;?Mocking me with its undeveloped truth,?Wealth unappropriated, glory lost!?Cruel is she who took from me that substance?With which I might have conquered an escape,?Leaving me, a forlorn old spirit, sere and grey.?Musing through barren hours upon the past,?I think with bitterness on those who once?Were friends and lovers--Queen, companions, Wife!?Forgotten! yes, forgotten by them all!?The luxuries of the world-taxing city,?The kisses of their children, smiles