They placed me where those streamers play,

Those nimble beams of brilliant light;

It would the stoutest heart dismay,

To see, to feel, that dreadful sight:

So swift, so pure, so cold, so bright,

They pierced my frame with icy wound;

And all that half-year’s polar night,

Those dancing streamers wrapp’d me round.

Slowly that darkness pass’d away,

When down upon the earth I fell, -