Now deep in counsel with his chiefs; anon,
He starts as at the trumpet, leads them on,
And wins the day;-his battle-shout alarms
None but the infant in the nurse's arms;
Soon hushed, but closer to her side, it sleeps;
While he abroad his watch in silence keeps.

At every door he halts, and brings a sigh,
But leaves a blessing, when he marches by:
He stops: from that low roof, a deadly groan
Hath made unutterable anguish known;
A spirit into eternity hath passed;

A spouse, a father, there hath breathed his last.
The widow and her little ones weep not;

In its excess their misery is forgot,

One dumb, dark moment;-then from all their eyes
Rain the salt tears, and loud their wailings rise.
Ah! little think that family forlorn

How brief the parting-they shall meet ere morn!
For lo! the witness of their pangs hath caught
A sight that startles madness into thought;
Back from their gate unconsciously he reels-
A resurrection of his soul he feels.

There is a motion in the air;

his eye

Blinks as it feared the falling of the sky.

The splendid peak of adamantine ice-
At sunset like an earthly Paradise,

And in the moon of such empyrean hue,

It seemed to bring the unseen world to view;

That splendid peak, the Power (which to the spheres Had piled its turrets through a thousand years)

Touches, as lightly as the passing wind,

And the huge mass, o'erbalanced, undermined,
And dislocated from its base of snow,
Slides down the slope, majestically slow,
Till o'er the precipice, down headlong sent,
And in ten thousand thousand spangles rent,
It piles a hill were spread a vale before:
From rock to rock the echoes round the shore
Tell with their deep artillery the fate

Of the whole village, crushed beneath its weight.
The sleepers wake, their homes in ruins hurled,
They wake from death into another world.

The gazing maniac, palsied into stone,
Amidst the wreck of ice, survives alone;
A sudden interval of reason gleams,

Steady and clear, amidst his 'wildering dreams,

But shows reality in such a shape,
'T were rapture back to frenzy to escape;
Again the clouds of desolation roll,

Blotting all old remembrance from his soul;
Whate'er his sorrows or his joys have been,
His spirit grows embodied through this scene;
With eyes of agony, and clenching hands,
Fixed in recoil, a frozen form he stands,
And, smit with wonder at his people's doom,
Becomes the monument upon their tomb.

Behold a scene magnificent and new;
Nor land nor water meet the excursive view;
The round horizon girds one frozen plain,
The mighty tombstone of the buried main,
Where dark, and silent, and unfelt to flow,
A dead sea sleeps with all its tribes below.
But heaven is still itself; the deep blue sky
Comes down with smiles to meet the glancing eye,
Though if a keener sight its bound would trace,
The arch recedes through everlasting space.
The sun, in morning glory, mounts his throne,
Nor shines he here in solitude unknown;

North, south, and west, by dogs or reindeer drawn,
Careering sledges cross the unbroken lawn,

And bring from bays and forelands round the coast,
Youth, beauty, valour, Greenland's proudest boast,
Who thus, in winter's long and social reign,
Hold feasts and tournaments upon the main,
When, built of solid floods, his bridge extends
A highway o'er the gulf to meeting friends,
Whom rocks impassable, or winds and tide,
Fickle and false, in summer months divide.

The scene runs round with motion, rings with mirth,
No happier spot upon the peopled earth;
The drifted snow to dust the travellers beat,
The uneven ice is flint beneath their feet.
Here tents, a gay encampment, rise around,
Where music, song, and revelry resound;

There the blue smoke upwreathes a hundred spires,
Where humbler groups have lit their pinewood fires.
Ere long they quit the tables; knights and dames
Lead the blithe multitude to boisterous games.
Bears, wolves, and lynxes yonder head the chase;
Here start the harnessed reindeer in the race;
Borne without wheels, a flight of rival cars
Track the ice-firmament, like shooting stars,

Right to the goal converging as they run,
They dwindle through the distance into one.
Where smoother waves have formed a sea of glass,
With pantomimic change the skaters pass;

Now toil like ships 'gainst wind and stream; then wheel
Like flames blown suddenly asunder; reel

Like drunkards; then dispersed in tangents wide,
Away with speed invisible they glide.

Peace in their hearts, death weapons in their hands,
Fierce in mock battle meet fraternal bands,
Whom the same chiefs erewhile to conflict led,
When friends by friends, by kindred kindred bled.
Here youthful rings with pipe and drum advance,
And foot the mazes of the giddy dance;
Greybeard spectators, with illumined eye,
Lean on their staves and talk of days gone by;
Children, who mimic all, from pipe and drum
To chase and battle, dream of years to come.
Those years to come the young shall ne'er behold;
The days gone by no more rejoice the old!
There is a boy, a solitary boy,

Who takes no part in all this whirl of joy,

Yet, in the speechless transport of his soul,

He lives, and moves, and breathes throughout the whole.
Him should destruction spare, the plot of earth

That forms his playground gave a poet birth,
Who, on the wings of his immortal lays,

Thine heroes, Greenland! to the stars shall raise.
It must not be :-abruptly from the show

He turns his eyes; his thoughts are gone below
To sound the depths of ocean, where his mind
Creates the wonders which it cannot find.
Listening, as oft he listens in a shell

To the mock tide's alternate fall and swell,
He kneels upon the ice,-inclines his ear,
And hears-or does he only seem to hear?-
A sound, as though the Genius of the Deep
Heaved a long sigh, awaking out of sleep.
He starts; 't was but a pulse within his brain!
No-for he feels it beat through every vein;
Groan following groan, (as from a giant's breast.
Beneath a burying mountain, ill at rest,)
With awe ineffable his spirit thrills,

And rapture fires his blood, while terror chills.
The keen expression of his eye alarms

His mother; she has caught him in her arms,