Still fared we north across that frozen waste Of icy horror ringed with awful night, To seek the living in a world of death; And as we fared a terror grew and grew About my heart like madness, till I dreamed A vague desire to flee by night and creep, By steel-blue, windless plain and haunted wood, And wizened shore and headland, once more south.
There as we went the days grew wan and shrunk, And nights grew vast and weird and beautiful, Walled with flame-glories of auroral light, Ringing the frozen world with myriad spears Of awful splendour there across the night. And ever anon a shadowy, spectral pack Of gleaming eyes and panting, lurid tongues Haunted the lone horizon toward the south.
Then life ebbed lower in the bravest heart, And spake the leader, “If in ten more days We chance on nothing, then will we return, And set our faces once more to the south.” For that dread land began to close us in, With cold and hunger, bit at our poor limbs, Till life grew there a feeble, flickering flame, Amid the snows and ice-floes of that land. Then ten days crept out shrunk and grey and wan, With nothing but the lonely, haunted waste. Then spake the leader, “If in five more days!” Then parcelled out those five grey, haggard days, While life to me grew like an ebbing tide, That surged far out from some dread death-like strand. And horror came upon me like the night, That seemed to gird the world in desolate walls. Then spake the leader, “If in three more days!”
But when the third day waned we came, at last, Unto the shores of some dread, lonely sea, That gloomed to north and night, and far beyond, Where ruined straits and headlands loomed and sank, There seemed the awful endings of the world.
Then spake the leader, “Let us go not yet, But stay a little ere we turn us south, Perchance, poor souls, they might be somewhere here.” And then to me, “You go, for you are young And strong, and life throbs quickest in your veins, And you have eyes more strong to see, for ours Are dimmed by the dread frost-mists of this land; And creep out there beyond yon gleaming ledge, And bring me word of what you there may see. And if you meet no sign of mast or sail, Or hull or wreck, or mark of living soul, Then we will turn our faces to the south; For this great ocean’s vastness hems us in, And death here nightly creeps from strand to strand, And binds with girth of black the gleaming world.”
Then whispering “Madness, madness,” to the dark, I crept me fearful o’er that gleaming ledge, And saw but night and awful gulfs of dark, And weird ice-mountains looming desolate there, And far beyond the vastness of that sea. And then—O God, why died I not that hour? Amid the gleaming floes far up that shore, So far it seemed that man’s foot scarce could go, The certain, tapering outline of a mast, And one small patch of rag; and then I felt No man could ever live to reach that place, And horror seized me of that haunted world, That I should die there and be froze for aye, Amid the ice-core of its awful heart.
Then crept I back the weak ghost of a life, A miserable, shaking, coffined fear, And spake, “I saw but ice and winds and dark, And the dread vastness of that desolate sea.” Again he spake, “Creep out once more and look, Perchance your sight was misled by the gleam.” And then once more I crept out on that ledge, And saw again the night and awful dark, And that poor beckoning mast that haunts me yet; And as I lay those moments seemed to grow, As men have felt in looking down long years, And there I chose “’twixt evil and the good,” And took the evil; then began my hell, And back I crept with that black lie on lips, And spake again, “I only saw the night, And those weird mountains and the awful deep.”
At that he moaned and spake, “Poor souls! Poor souls! Then they are doomed if ever men were doomed.” Whereat a sudden, great auroral flame Filled all the heaven, lighting wastes and sea, And came a wondrous shock across the world, Like sounds of far-off battle where hosts die, As if God thundered back mine awful lie, And I fell in a heap where all was black.
When next I lived we were full three days south, And two had died upon that dreadful march; Then memory came, and I went laughing mad, But kept mine awful secret to this hour.
No, priest, you can do nothing, pain like mine Must smoulder out in its own agony, Till there be nought but ashes at the last.