English

With utmost Pleasure thus our Poet hears,
And learns the sacred Musick of the Sphears,
Where all the various Cadences are shown;
Yet hardly sweeter than his own:
Whose artful sublimate Fire
Before 'twas from Earth's Prison free,
Could Things inanimate inspire,
And give the Heroe Immortality:
Revive the Dead in charming Layes,
And crown the Just with never fading Bayes.
Long, long 'ere he on Albious Isle appear'd,
Or Albious drooping Genius cheer'd;
When first the Fates his Being did decree,

But Hark!
The heavenly Sphears turn round;
And Dryden wonders at th' amazing Sound:
With Joy he sees, with Rapture hears
What he so long had sought;
And listens to the Harmony,
In Extasy of Thought.
Then with a gen'rous Æmulation tries,
To explicate the tuneful Mysteries:
Marks how the Numbers gently rose,
And in celestial Diapazons close:
Where they turn, and when they rest:
And all the diff'rent Sounds revolves within his Breast.
Until he plainly hath descri'd
Where Harmony exalts her Seat,

Whether thy gen'rous Soul
Is by Refusion pass'd into the Whole:
Or o'er some Planet doth preside:
Or in Completion of it's Doom,
A Guardian Genius is become,
Some worthy Friend to guide?
Or, art thou mounted to an higher Sphear,
As thou in Harmony and Wit,
Excel'd all Others here?
Since we thy Presence on this Earth enjoy'd,
Oh where art thou retir'd? Oh how art thou employ'd?
If we by Death Perfection know,
And view the Spring whence second Causes flow;

" Come away from the gloom of thy dungeon forlorn,
And escape from the thraldom of sorrow and sleep:
Come, and catch the first hues on the cheek of the morn,
From the pine-covered mountain's precipitous steep:
For the lark hath its matin hymn newly begun,
And the last star that lingered hath melted away;
Every shadow falls back from the face of the sun,
And the world is awake in the fulness of day.

" Come away in the pride of my glorious noon,
And retire to some old haunted forest with me,

" Come, Captive, come, let us joyfully roam
O'er the green and reviving earth;
While the skies are fair, and the vocal air
Resounds with the voice of mirth:
The dew-drop lies in the violet's eyes,
And the primrose gems the grass;
On verdurous brinks, the cowslip drinks
Of the brooklets as they pass: —
But Summer is near, and I may not stay, —
Come away, man of grief — come away, come away!

" The lark sings loud in the silvery cloud,
And the thrush in the emerald bowers;

D EEP in a loathsome dungeon's twilight gloom,
Which scarce received a dubious gleam of day,
Where many a wretch had found a living tomb —
Pining for home, — a prisoned patriot lay.
As the rich hues of sunset waned away,
And land and sea with rosy radiance shone,
Through the barred lattice came the evening ray,
Beaming in beauty on the wall of stone, —

Four hundred years
Leif slept;
Saturn kept spinning in his rings
And the ants crept.
Then Columbus came to Iceland, —
Did he hear of Leif?
A casual name treasured in old tunes,
An old man's tale perhaps,
Rumors men passed along the docks,
Something priests read him from their runes?
By every rule he
Should have known
Iceland was Ultima Thule.
Here, however, was an ant who thought, —
Clever —
Watching the tides and flights of birds,

Two hundred years —
Upon ten thousand miles of beaches
Never a sail dawned!
Never a glimmer or a shimmer!
The Redmen and the Skraelings
Kept the coasts,
With darkness in their brains,
Stealing up and down a little way
On useless evil errands
Like painted demon-ghosts;
The fire pots in their low canoes
Making a faint red glower in the sky.
So the long night eclipsed the day
While Leif's house mouldered away.
Can you not see the winter closing down
Year after year on Norumbega Town,

Leif was a man's name.
Over the huge, bold shoulder of the world he came,
Into a land as lonesome as a star
That God had set aside
For mortals not to mar, —
Too huge for men, —
Not till Leif's sons set foot upon the moon
Will such a deed as his be done again.

Leif Erikson came rowing up the Charles
In the sea-battered dragon-ships,

Darkness Prevails

Darkness to northward prevails;
Scarcely a ship goes to Iceland.
Only old Adam of Bremen,
Painting by lamp and at midnight
The face of the planet on vellum,
Writes of the lands to the westward.
Only where Iceland uplifts
The pall of the smoke of Mt. Hekla,
Streaking the midnight sun,
And surprising the north with wild flowers,
The secret was cherished by priests
Who tell of an oar washed from westward,
Carved with the rude runes of Greenland,
Showing the Fair-hairs still dwelt there.