-Not as the Spaniard, on his flag unfurl'd,
A bloody omen through a Pagan world:
-Not the vain image, which the Devotee
Clasps as the God of his idolatry;

But in their hearts, to Greenland's western shore,
That dear memorial of their Lord they bore,
Amidst the wilderness to lift the sign
Of wrath appeased by sacrifice divine;
And bid a serpent-stung and dying race
Look on their Healer, and be saved by grace.

CANTO II.

"T was Mercy wrote the lines of judgment there;
None who from earth can read them may despair;
Man!-let the warning strike presumption dumb;-
Awake, arise, escape the wrath to come;

No resurrection from that grave shall be;
The worm within is-immortality.

The terrors of Jehovah, and his grace,
The Brethren bear to earth's remotest race.
And now, exulting on their swift career,
The northern waters narrowing in the rear,
They rise upon th' Atlantic flood, that rolls
Shoreless and fathomless between the poles,
Whose waves the east and western world divide,
Then gird the globe with one circumfluent tide;

Hopes and fears.-The Brethren pursue their Voyage. For mighty Ocean, by whatever name
-A digression on Iceland.

WHAT are thine hopes, Humanity?-thy fears?
Poor voyager, upon this flood of years,
Whose tide, unturning, hurries to the sea
Of dark unsearchable eternity,

The fragile skiffs, in which thy children sail
A day, an hour, a moment, with the gale,
Then vanish-gone like eagles on the wind,
Or fish in waves, that yield and close behind?
Thine hopes,-lost anchors buried in the deep,
That rust, through storm and calm, in iron sleep;
Whose cables, loose aloft and fix'd below,
Rot with the sea-weed, floating to and fro!
Thy fears-are wrecks that strew the fatal surge,
Whose whirlpools swallow, or whose currents urge
Adventurous barks on rocks, that lurk at rest,
Where the blue halcyon builds her foam-light nest;
Or strand them on illumined shoals, that gleam
Like drifted gold in summer's cloudless beam.
Thus would thy race, beneath their parent's eye,
Live without knowledge, without prospect die.

But when Religion bids her spirit breathe,
And opens bliss above and woe beneath;
When God reveals his march through Nature's night,
His steps are beauty, and his presence light:
His voice is life-the dead in conscience start;
They feel a new creation in the heart.
Ah! then, Humanity, thy hopes, thy fears,
How changed, how wondrous!--On this tide of years,
Though the frail barks, in which thine offspring sail
Their day, their hour, their moment, with the gale,
Must perish-Shipwreck only sets them free;
With joys unmeasured as eternity,
They ply on seas of glass their golden oars,
And pluck immortal fruits along the shores;
Nor shall their cables fail, their anchors rust,
Who wait the resurrection of the just:
Moor'd on the rock of ages, though decay
Moulder the weak terrestrial frame away,
The trumpet sounds,-and lo! wherever spread,
Earth, air, and ocean, render back their dead,
And souls with bodies, spiritual and divine,
In the new heavens, like stars for ever shine.

Known to vain man, is everywhere the same,
And deems all regions by his gulfs embraced
But vassal tenures of his sovereign waste.
Clear shines the sun; the surge, intensely blue,
Assumes by day heaven's own aerial hue:
Buoyant and beautiful, as through a sky,
On balanced wings, behold the vessel fly;
Invisibly impell'd, as though it felt

A soul, within its heart of oak that dwelt,
Which broke the billows with spontaneous force,
Ruled the free elements, and chose its course.
Not so and yet along the trackless realm,
A hand unseen directs th' unconscious helm;
The Power that sojourn'd in the cloud by day,
And fire by night, on Israel's desert way;
That Power the obedient vessel owns:-His will,
Tempest and calm, and death and life, fulfil.

Day following day the current smoothly flows;
Labor is but refreshment from repose;
Perils are vanish'd; every fear resign'd;
Peace walks the waves, Hope carols on the wind;
And Time so sweetly travels o'er the deep,
They feel his motion like the fall of sleep
On weary limbs, that, stretch'd in stillness, seem
Then sink,-to wake in some transporting dream.
To float upon the eddy of a stream,

Thus, while the Brethren far in exile roam,
Visions of Greenland show their future home.
-Now a dark speck, but brightening as it flies,
A vagrant sea-fowl glads their eager eyes;
How lovely, from the narrow deck to see
The meanest link of nature's family,
Which makes us feel, in dreariest solitude,
Affinity with all that breathe renew'd!
At once a thousand kind emotions start,
And the blood warms and mantles round the heart!
-O'er the ship's lee, the waves, in shadow seen,
Change from deep indigo to beryl green,
And wreaths of frequent weed, that slowly float,
Land to the watchful mariner denote:

Ere long the pulse beats quicker through his breast,
When, like a range of evening clouds at rest,
Iceland's grey cliffs and ragged coast he sees,
But shuns them, leaning on the southern breeze;

These are thine Hopes;-thy Fears what tongue can And while they vanish far in distance, tells

tell?

Behold them graven on the gates of Hell:
"The wrath of God abideth here: his breath
Kindled the flames:-this is the second death."

Of lakes of fire and necromancers' spells.

Strange Isle! a moment to poetic gaze
Rise in thy majesty of rocks and bays,

Glens, fountains, caves, that seem not things of earth,
But the wild shapes of some prodigious birth;
As if the kraken, monarch of the sea,
Wallowing abroad in his immensity,

By polar storins and lightning shafts assail'd,
Wedged with ice mountains, here had fought and fail'd;
Perish'd-and in the petrifying blast,

His hulk became an island rooted fast: '
-Rather, from ocean's dark foundation hurl'd,
Thou art a type of his mysterious world,
Buoy'd on the desolate abyss, to show
What wonders of creation hide below.

Here Hecla's triple peaks, with meteor lights,
Nature's own beacons, cheer hybernal nights:
But when the orient flames in red array,
Like ghosts the spectral splendors flee the day;
Morn at her feet beholds supinely spread
The carcass of the old chimera dead,
That wont to vomit flames and molten ore,
Now cleft asunder to the inmost core;

In smouldering heaps, wide wrecks and cinders strown,
Lie like the walls of Sodom overthrown
(Ere from the face of blushing Nature swept,
And where the city stood, the Dead Sea slept);
While inaccessible, tradition feigns,
To human foot the guarded top remains,
Where birds of hideous shape and doleful note,
Fate's ministers, in livid vapors float.

Far off, amidst the placid sunshine, glow
Mountains with hearts of fire and crests of snow,
Whose blacken'd slopes with deep ravines intrench'd,
Their thunders silenced, and their lightnings quench'd,
Still the slow heat of spent eruptions breathe,
While embryo earthquakes swell their wombs beneath.

Hark! from yon caldron cave, the battle sound,
of fire and water warring under ground;
Rack'd on the wheels of an ebullient tide,
Here might some spirit, fallen from bliss, abide,
Such fitful wailings of intense despair,
Such emanating splendors fill the air.

1 The most horrible of fabulous sea-monsters is the kraken or kafgufa, which many of the Norway fishers pretend to have seen in part, but none entire. They say, that when they find a place which is at one time 80 or 100 fathoms deep, and at another only 20 or 30, and also observe a multitude of fishes, allured by a delicious exhalation which the kraken emits, they conclude that there is one below them. They therefore hasten to secure a large draught of the fry around them; but as soon as they perceive the soundings to grow shallower, they scud away, and from a safe distance behold him rising in a chain of ridges and spires, that thicken as they emerge till they resemble the masts of innumerable vessels moored on a rocky coast. He then riots upon the fish that have been stranded and entangled in the forest of spikes upon his back, and having satiated his hunger, plunges into the depths with a violent agitation of the waters. See Crantz's Greenland.

2 Hecla is now the ruins of a volcano. The three peaks are

-He comes, he comes; th' infuriate Geyser springs
Up to the firmament on vapory wings;
With breathless awe the mounting glory view;
White whirling clouds his steep ascent pursue.
But lo! a glimpse-refulgent to the gale,
He starts all naked through his riven veil;
A fountain-column, terrible and bright,
A living, breathing, moving form of light:
From central earth to heaven's meridian thrown,
The mighty apparition towers alone,
Rising, as though for ever he could rise,
Storm and resume his palace in the skies.
All foam, and turbulence, and wrath below,
Around him beams the reconciling bow,
(Signal of peace, whose radiant girdle binds,
Till nature's doom, the waters and the winds ;)
While mist and spray, condensed to sudden dews,
The air illumine with celestial hues,

As if the bounteous sun were raining down
The richest gems of his imperial crown.
In vain the spirit wrestles to break free,
Foot-bound to fathomless captivity;
A power unseen, by sympathetic spell
For ever working,-to his flinty cell,
Recalls him from the ramparts of the spheres;
He yields, collapses, lessens, disappears;
Darkness receives him in her vague abyss,
Around whose verge light froth and bubbles hiss,
While the low murmurs of the refluent tide
Far into subterranean silence glide,
The eye still gazing down the dread profound,
When the bent ear hath wholly lost the sound.
-But is he slain and sepulchred ?-Again
The deathless giant sallies from his den,
Scales with recruited strength the ethereal walls,
Struggles afresh for liberty,-and falls.
Yes, and for liberty the fight renew'd,
By day, by night, undaunted, unsubdued,
He shall maintain, till Iceland's solid base
Fail, and the mountains vanish from its face.

And can these fail?-Of Alpine height and mould,
Schapta's unshaken battlements behold:
His throne an hundred hills; his sun-crown'd head
Resting on clouds; his robe of shadow spread
O'er half the isle; he pours from either hand
An unexhausted river through the land,
On whose fair banks, through valleys warm and green,
Cattle and flocks, and homes, and spires are seen.
Here Nature's earthquake pangs were never felt;
Here in repose hath man for ages dwelt ;
The everlasting mountain seems to say,
I am, and I shall never pass away."

Yet fifty winters, and with huge uproar,
Thy pride shall perish ;-thou shalt be no more;
Amidst chaotic ruins on the plain,

Those cliffs, these waters, shall be sought in vain!'

said to be haunted by evil spirits in the shape of birds. The-Through the dim vista of unfolding years, A pageant of portentous woe appears.

island abounds with volcanic mountains.

3 The Geysers, or boiling fountains, of Iceland, have been so frequently and so happily described, that their phenomena are sufficiently familiar to general readers not to require any particular illustration here. The Great Geyser, according to Dr. Henderson (the latest traveller who has published an account of leeland), is seventy-eight feet in perpendicular depth, and from eight to ten feet in diameter: the mouth is a considerable basin, from which the column of boiling water is ejaculated to various heights; sometimes exceeding 100 feet.

1 This imaginary prophecy (1733) was fulfilled just fifty years afterwards, in 1783. The Schapta, Schaptka, or Skaftar Yokul and its adjacencies were the subjects of the most tremendous volcanic devastation on record. Two rivers were sunk or evaporated, and their channels filled up with lava; many villages were utterly destroyed; and one-fourth part of the island rendered nearly uninhabitable. Famine and pestilence followed.

Yon rosy groups, with golden locks, at play,
I see them,-few, decrepit, silent, grey;
Their fathers all at rest beneath the sod,
Whose flowerless verdure marks the House of God,
Home of the living and the dead;-where meet
Kindred and strangers, in communion sweet,
When dawns the Sabbath on the block-built pile;
The kiss of peace, the welcome, and the smile
Go round; till comes the Priest, a father there,
And the bell knolls his family to prayer;
Angels might stoop from thrones in heaven, to be
Co-worshippers in such a family,

Whom from their nooks and dells, where'er they roam,
The Sabbath gathers to their common home.
Oh! I would stand a keeper at this gate,
Rather than reign with kings in guilty state;
A day in such serene enjoyment spent
Were worth an age of splendid discontent!
-But whither am I hurried from my theme?
Schapta returns on the prophetic dream.

One crust of lava, through whose cinder-heat
The pulse of buried streams is felt to beat;
These form the frequent fissures, eddying white,
Sublimed to vapor, issue forth like light
Amidst the sulphury fumes that, drear and dun,
Poison the atmosphere and blind the sun.
Above, as if the sky had felt the stroke
Of that volcano, and consumed to smoke,
One cloud appears in heaven, and one alone,
Hung round the dark horizon's craggy zone,
Forming at once the vast encireling wall,
And the dense roof of some Tartarean hall,
Propt by a thousand pillars, huge and strange,
Fantastic forms that every moment change,
As hissing, surging from the floor beneath,
Volumes of steam th' imprison'd waters breathe.
Then should the sun, ere evening gloom ascend,
Quick from the west the murky curtain rend,
And pour the beauty of his beams between
These hideous arches, and light up the scene;
At the sweet touch of his transforming rays
With amber lustre all the columns blaze,

From eve till morn strange meteors streak the pole; And the thick folds of cumbrous fog aloof

At cloudless noon mysterious thunders roll,

As if below both shore and ocean hurl'd
From deep convulsions of the nether world.

Anon the river, boiling from its bed,

Change to rich drapery of celestial woof:

With such enchantment air and earth were fraught,
Beyond the coloring of the wealthiest thought,
That Iceland Scalds, transported at the view,

Shall leap its bounds and o'er the lowlands spread, Might deem the legends of their fathers true,
Then waste in exhalation,-leaving void

As its own channel, utterly destroy'd,

Fields, gardens, dwellings, churches and their graves,
All wreck'd, or disappearing with the waves.
The fugitives that 'scape this instant death
Inhale slow pestilence with every breath;

And here behold, illumining the waste,
Till rapt imagination joy'd to hear
The palace of immortal Odin placed;

The neigh of steeds, the clank of armor near,
And saw, in barbarous state, the tables spread
With shadowy food, and compass'd with the dead,

Mephitic steams from Schapta's smouldering breast Weary from conflicts, still the fierce delight

With livid horror shall the air infest;

And day shall glare so foully on the sight,
Darkness were refuge from the curse of light.
Lo! far among the glaciers, wrapt in gloom,
The red precursors of approaching doom,
Scatter'd and solitary founts of fire,
Unlock'd by hands invisible, aspire;
Ere long more rapidly than eye can count,
Above, beneath, they multiply, they mount,
Converge, condense,-a crimson phalanx form,
And aloft in one unbounded storm;
From heaven's red roof the fierce reflections throw
A sea of fluctuating light below.

rage

-Now the whole army of destroyers, fleet
As whirlwinds, terrible as lightnings, meet;
The mountains melt like wax along their course,
When downward, pouring with resistless force,
Through the void channel where the river roll'd,
To ocean's verge their flaming march they hold;
While blocks of ice, and crags of granite rent,
Half-fluid ore, and rugged minerals blent,
Float on the gulf, till molten or immersed,
Or in explosive thunderbolts dispersed.
Thus shall the Schapta, towering on the brink
Of unknown jeopardy, in ruin sink;
And, this wild paroxysm of frenzy past,
At her own work shall Nature stand aghast.

Look on this desolation :-mark yon brow,
Once adamant, a cone of ashes now:

Here rivers swamp'd; there valleys levell'd, plains
O'erwhelm'd;-one black-red wilderness remains,

Of spectre-warriors, in the daily fight:

Then while they quaff'd the mead from sculls of foes,
By whirlwind gusts the din of battle rose;
The strife of tongues, the tournament of words
Following the shock of shields, the clash of swords;
Till, gorged and drunken at th' enormous feast,
Awhile their revels and their clamors ceased;
Ceased to the eye and ear;-yet where they lay,
Like sleeping lions, surfeited with prey,
In tawny groups, recumbent through the den,
In dreams the heroes drank and fought again.

Away with such Divinities! their birth
Man's brain-sick superstition, and their mirth
Lust, rapine, cruelty-their fell employ
God's works and their own votaries to destroy.
-The Runic Bard to nobler themes shall string
His ancient harp, and mightier triumphs sing:
For glorious days are risen on Iceland :-clear
The gospel-trumpet sounds to every ear,
And deep in many a heart the Spirit's voice
Bids the believing soul in hope rejoice.
O'er the stern face of this tempestuous isle,
Though briefly Spring, and Autumn never, smile,
Truth walks with naked foot th' unyielding snows,
And the glad desert blossoms like the rose.
Though earthquakes heave, though torrents drown
his cot,

Volcanoes waste his fields,—the peasant's lot
Is blest beyond the destiny of kings:

Lifting his eyes above sublunar things,

Like dying Stephen, when he saw in prayer
Heaven open'd, and his Savior beckoning there,
He cries, and clasps his Bible to his breast,
Let the earth perish,-here is not my rest."

CANTO III.

The Voyage to Greenland concluded.-A Fog at Sea.
-Ice-fields.-Eclipse of the Sun.-The Greenland
fable of Malina and Aninga.-A Storm.-The Ice-
Blink.-Northern Lights.-The Brethren land.

How speed the faithful witnesses, who bore
The Bible and its hopes to Greenland's shore?
-Like Noah's ark, alone upon the wave
(Of one lost world the immeasurable grave),
Yonder the ship, a solitary speck,

Comes bounding from the horizon; while on deck
Again imagination rests her wing,

And smoothes her pinions, while the Pilgrims sing
Their vesper-orisons.-The Sun retires,
Not as he wont, with clear and golden fires;
Bewilder'd in a labyrinth of haze,
His orb, redoubled with discolor'd rays,
Struggles and vanishes;-along the deep,
With slow array, expanding vapors creep,
Whose folds, in twilight's yellow glare uncurl'd,
Present the dreams of an unreal world;
Islands in air suspended; marching ghosts
Of armies, shapes of castles, winding coasts,
Navies at anchor, mountains, woods, and streams,
Where all is strange, and nothing what it seems;
Till deep involving gloom, without a spark
Of star, moon, meteor, desolately dark,
Seals up the vision:-then the Pilot's fears
Slacken his arm; a doubtful course he steers,
Till morning comes, but comes not clad in light;
Uprisen day is but a paler night,

Revealing not a glimpse of sea or sky;

The ship's circumference bounds the sailor's eye.
So cold and dense th' impervious fog extends,
He might have touch'd the point where being ends.
His bark is all the universe; so void
The scene, as though creation were destroy'd,
And he and his few mates, of all their race,
Were here becalm'd in everlasting space.2

Silent and motionless, above, below,

The sails all struck, the waves unheard to flow,
In this drear blank of utter solitude,

Where life stands still, no faithless fears intrude;
Through that impervious veil the Brethren see
The face of omnipresent Deity:

Nor him alone;-whate'er his hand hath made;
His glory in the firmament display'd;
The sun majestic in his course, and sole;
The moon and stars rejoicing round the pole;
Earth o'er its peopled realms and wastes unknown,
Clad in the wealth of every varying zone;
Ocean through all th' enchantment of his forms,
From breathing calms to devastating storms;
Heaven in the vision of eternal bliss,
Death's terrors, hell's unsearchable abyss;
-Though rapt in secrecy from human eye,
These in the mind's profound sensorium lie,
And, with their Maker, by a glance of thought,
Are, in a moment to remembrance brought;
Then most, when most restrain'd th' imperfect sight
God and his works shine forth in his own light.
Yet clearest through that veil the Pilgrims trace
Their Father's image in their Savior's face;
A sigh can waft them to his feet in prayer,
Not Gabriel bends with more acceptance there,
Nor to the throne from heaven's pure altar rise
The odors of a sweeter sacrifice,
Than when before the mercy-seat they kneel,
And tell Him all they fear, or hope, or feel:
Perils without, and enemies within,
Satan, the world, temptation, weakness, sin;
Yet rest unshaken on his sure defence,
Invincible through his omnipotence.
"Oh! step by step," they cry
"direct our way,
And give thy grace, like manna, day by day;
The store of yesterday will not suffice,
To-morrrow's sun to us may never rise;
Safe only, when our souls are staid on Thee;
Rich only, when we know our poverty."

with each member of the church in private, and of discourse

by the ministers in the public meeting. Many a time it has

been found that the word of the day, on which some peculiar
event occurred, has remarkably coincided with it. Thus on
this 10th of April, when our brethren set sail (from Copen-
hagen) on a mission, which often afterwards seemed to baffle
all hope, the word was (Heb. xi, 1), Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.'
We view Him, whom no eye can see,
With faith's perspective stedfastly.

1 One of the finest specimens of Icelandic poetry extant is said to be the "Ode to the British and Foreign Bible Society," In this confidence they set sail, nor did they suffer themselves composed by the Rev. John Thorlakson, of Bægisâ, the trans-to be confounded by any of the unspeakable difficulties of the lator of Milton's Paradise Lost into his native tongue. Of this following years, till they and we at last beheld the completion Ode there is a Latin translation by the learned Iceland Professor, of what they hoped for by faith. They had a speedy, and, exFinn Magnusson. A spirited English version has also appeared. Thorlakson is a venerable old man, and holds church preferment to the amount of six pounds five shillings per annum, out of which be allows a stipend to a curate.

2 The incidents described in this Canto are founded upon the real events of the voyage of the Missionaries, as given in Crantz's History.

He says:-"On the 10th of April the Brethren went on board the king's ship Caritas, Captain Hildebrand, accompanied with many sincere wishes for blessing from the court (of Denmark) and all benevolent minds. The congregation at Herrnhut had a custom, from the year 1729, before the commencement of a year, to compile a little manual, containing a text of Holy Scripture for every day in the same, and each illustrated or applied by a verse annexed, out of the hymn-book. This text was called the word of the day; it was given to be the subject of meditation

cepting some storms, a commodious voyage. They sailed by Shetland, April 22d, passing there out of the North into the West Sea, or long reach, and entered Davis's Straits about the beginning of May. On the 6th they fell among some floating ice, in a thick fog, and the next day were assailed by a terrible tempest; but this very tempest drove the ice so far asunder, that it also dissipated their fears. The 13th they descried land, but on the same day, after a total eclipse of the sun, there arose a violent storm, that lasted four days and nights, and drove them sixty leagues back. May the 20th, they entered Ball's River, after a voyage of six weeks. The word of the day was 'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. By this they were frequently encouraged in the first years ensuing, amidst all the opposition which they encountered, and the small prospect of the conversion of the heathens."

241