BOOK X.
ARGUMENT.
The Polar Spring—The Boreal Lights and apparition of a double sun—The Rocky Isle—The Bears—The mysterious Shadow from the Crater of the extinct Volcano—The Bears scent the steps of Man: their movements described—Arthur's approach—The Bears emerge from their coverts—The Shadow takes form and life—The Demon Dwarf described—His parley with Arthur—The King follows the Dwarf into the interior of the volcanic rock—The Antediluvian Skeletons—The Troll-Fiends and their tasks—Arthur arrives at the Cave of Lok—The Corpses of the armed Giants—The Valkyrs at their loom—The Wars that they weave—The Dwarf addresses Arthur—The King's fear—He approaches the sleeping Fiend, and the curtains close around him—Meanwhile Gawaine and the Norwegians have tracked Arthur's steps on the snow, and arrive at the Isle—Are attacked by the Bears—The noises and eruption from the Volcano—The re-appearance of Arthur—The change in him—Freedom and its characteristics—Arthur and his band renew their way along the coast; ships are seen—How Arthur obtains a bark from the Rugen Chieftain; and how Gawaine stores it—The Dove now leads homeward—Arthur reaches England; and, sailing up a river, enters the Mercian territory—He follows the Dove through a forest to the ruins built by the earliest Cimmerians—The wisdom and civilization of the ancestral Druidical races, as compared with their idolatrous successors at the time of the Roman Conquerors, whose remains alone are left to our age—Arthur lies down to rest amidst the moonlit ruins—The Dove vanishes—The nameless horror that seizes the King.
Spring on the Polar Seas!—not violet-crown'd1
By dewy Hours, nor to cerulean halls
Melodious hymn'd, yet Light itself around
Her stately path, sheds starry coronals.
Sublime she comes, as when, from Dis set free,
Came, through the flash of Jove, Persephoné:
She comes—that grand Aurora of the North!2
By steeds of fire her glorious chariot borne,
From Boreal courts the meteors flaming forth,
Ope heav'n on heav'n, before the mighty Morn:
And round the rebel giants of the night
On earth's last confines bursts the storm of light.
Wonder and awe! lo, where against the Sun3
A second Sun[1] his lurid front uprears!
As if the first-born lost Hyperion,
Hurl'd down of old, from his Uranian spheres,
Rose from the hell-rocks on his writhings pil'd,
And glared defiance on his Titan child.
Now life, the polar life, returns once more,4
The reindeer roots his mosses from the snows;
The whirring sea-gulls shriek along the shore;
Through oozing rills the cygnet gleaming goes;
And, where the ice some happier verdure frees,
Laugh into light frank-eyed anemones.
Out from the seas still solid, frown'd a lone5
Chaos of chasm and precipice and rock,
There, while the meteors on their revels shone,
Growling hoarse glee, in many a grauly flock,
With their huge young, the sea-bears sprawling play'd
Near the charr'd crater some mute Hecla made.
Sullen before that cavern's vast repose,6
Like the lorn wrecks of a despairing race
Chased to their last hold by triumphant foes,
Darkness and Horror stood! But from the space
Within the cave, and o'er the ice-ground wan,
Quivers a Shadow vaguely mocking man.
Like man's the Shadow falls, yet falling loses7
The shape it took, each moment changefully;
As when the wind on Runic waves confuses
The weird boughs toss'd from some prophetic tree.
Fantastic, goblin-like, and fitful thrown,
Comes the strange Shadow from the drear Unknown.