When like a sullen exile driven forth,
Southward, December drags his icy chain,
He graves fair pictures of his native North
On the crisp window-pane.
So some pale captive blurs, with lips unshorn,
The latticed glass, and shapes rude outlines there,
With listless finger and a look forlorn,
Cheating his dull despair.
The fairy fragments of some Arctic scene
I see to-night; blank wastes of polar snow,
Ice-laden boughs, and feathery pines that lean
Over ravines below.
Black frozen lakes, and icy peaks blown bare,
Break the white surface of the crusted pane,
And spear-like leaves, long ferns, and blossoms fair
Linked in silvery chain.
Draw me, I pray thee, by this slender thread;
Fancy, thou sorceress, bending vision-wrought
O’er that dim well perpetually fed
By the clear springs of thought!
Northward I turn, and tread those dreary strands,--
Lakes where the wild fowl breed, the swan abides;
Shores where the white fox, burrowing in the sands,
Harks to the droning tides.
And seas, where, drifting on a raft of ice,
The she bear rears her young; and cliffs so high,
The dark-winged birds that emulate their rise
Melt through the pale blue sky.
There, all night long, with far diverging rays,
And stalking shades, the red Auroras glow;
From the keen heaven, meek suns with pallid blaze
Light up the Arctic snow.
Guide me, I pray, along those waves remote,
That deep unstartled from its primal rest;
Some errant sail, the fisher’s lone light boat
Borne waif-like on its breast!
Lead me, I pray, where never shallop’s keel
Brake the dull ripples throbbing to their caves:
Where the mailed glacier with his armed heel
Spurs the resisting waves!
Paint me, I pray, the phantom hosts that hold
Celestial tourneys when the midnight calls;
On airy steeds, with lances bright and bold,
Storming her ancient halls.
Yet, while I look, the magic picture fades;
Melts the bright tracery from the frosted pane;
Trees, vales, and cliffs, in sparkling snows arrayed,
Dissolve in silvery rain.
Without, the day’s pale glories sink and swell
Over the black rise of yon wooded height;
The moon’s thin crescent, like a stranded shell,
Left on the shores of night.
Hark how the north wind, with a hasty hand,
Rattling my casement, frames his mystic rhyme.
House thee, rude minstrel, chanting through the land,
Runes of the olden times.