THE ICEBERGS.
———
BY PARK BENJAMIN.
———
[This poem was composed after reading a vivid description of the passage of a ship through the magnificent fields of ice in Hudson’s Bay, by Ballantyne.]
Beautiful are the Icebergs! gorgeous piles,
White, green, gold, crimson in the flashing rays
Of the round sun. Along the waves for miles
They rise like temples of remotest days.
Or like cathedrals, churches, columns grand,
Grander than all that modern Art can claim—
The gilded fabrics of some Eastern land,
The mighty monuments of Roman fame.
Our vessel sails among them like a bird
Of darkest form, and plumage turned to brown,
Beside their lustre, as they lie unstirred,
Yet threatening to careen and topple down.
Strange, splendid, massive, fanciful, grotesque,
Of shapes as various as Invention drew—
Gothic, Corinthian, Grecian, Arabesque,
Perfect or shattered, age-renowned or new.
Builded upon the ice-fields, stretching vast
Into mid-ocean, like a frozen shore
Which skirts a continent, unknown to past
Or present time and shall be evermore.
Cities and towns girt round with crystal walls,
And filled with crystal palaces, as fair
As Boreal Aurora, when she falls
Brilliant from heaven and streams along the air.
No sound disturbs the stillness of the scene
Hushed in eternal slumber, calm and deep;
To break the spell no voices intervene,
The very waters share the death-like sleep.
No fragment severs from the solid mass,
No torrents from the hills translucent flow,
But all is rigid, while we slowly pass,
As glacial mountains in a world of snow.
No avalanche impends, but leaning towers,
Like that of Pisa, seem about to rush
In ruin downward, though for years as hours
They still may stand, nor fear a final crush.
Ye icebergs! held by adamantine chains,
Nor moved from your foundations by the gales
Which Winter, hoary tyrant, ne’er restrains,
But sends, relentless, where his power prevails—
Ye are stern Desolation’s home and throne,
Fixed on the boundaries of human life;
The lofty watch-towers of the Frigid Zone,
Locked in securely from the ocean’s strife.
I look upon you with deep awe, and feel
That all my generation will decay
Ere Cold shall cease your ramparts to congeal,
Or Tempest hurl you from your base away!