Classic Poem

Oh ! what so wild as the white sea-gull!
So daring, so glad, so free!
Child of the blast and the roaring vast
Of the dauntless restless Sea! —
Mourn for her, mourn for her, white sea-gull!
Kin of thy kin was she.

Mourn her, ye Winds from summer seas
That stir the orange-blooms!
In vain ye seek among the trees
Those tawny Viking-plumes
She loved to loose for your delight,
Till, ruffled by your kisses bold,
They clustered round her visage bright,
A tangled filigree of gold.

Mourn her, ye Mountains! for the voice
That made your shadowed glens rejoice
With echoes of its crystal laughter
Is hushed, is mute, is passed away,
Is lost in the remote hereafter,
In death's illimitable distance.
Wrap your purpled heads in grey:
She whose spirit drew subsistence
From your thunder-riven breasts,
She, your novice, your disciple,
Mid a world of transient guests,
She who marked your rarest summits
For the paths her feet should tread —
She is dead.

Mourn her, thou Ocean! — Need I bid thee mourn?
Ah! no: thou knewest. Ere that word forlorn,
That " She is dead " could falter from the lips
Of those who watched, thou knewest; and the strips
Of umbrous kelp that hedge thy shoreward way
Shook tremulously, and a great shudder ran
Through thy deep bosom, and a voice began,
Thy voice, to wail along the desolate shore,
In anguish and in anger, that thy child,
Thy Viking-child, was lost forevermore,
Thy Viking-daughter, for whom a spirit wild
And free and unafraid had augured death
In storm-blown conflagration as of yore,
When the Valkyrie swooped the elusive breath
From heroes' lips up to the realms of Thor —
And left to thee to quench the scarring fire,
And salve the torments of thy love's desire
With the charred remnants of a funeral pyre.
But now thou mournest, since her form is given
To the rude keeping of the quiet earth,
And that which made it loved and lovely driven
O'er nebulous seas to some invisible birth
In lands beyond our knowledge. All is lost
To thee — and, therefore, mourn!
I, too,
Must haply weep a little, being tossed
From gulf to gulf of dark uncertainty:
Sure only that this loss, my loss, is true,
Her voice forever silent, and instead,
A cruel whisper through the vacancy:
" Thy Ingeborg is dead. "

There is a solace in the grief of others
For our most bitter grief,
Our burden, part-transposed with our brother's,
Is lightened past belief.
And oh, I am not lonely in my sorrow:
Though these, my natural friends,
The winds, the mountains, and the ocean, borrow
A pulse my fancy lends;
Though they in truth be but insensate matter,
Untouched by human woe,
And all this talk of kinship foolish chatter
To the wise ears that know;
Yet have I comradeship in grief, for many
There be of human-kind
Who loved fair Ingeborg, nor are there any
But view with stormy mind
Her glorious planet's all-too-early setting. —
O friends, what bonds are ours!
What fellowship of head and heart, begetting
Calm thoughts and mutual powers
Of consolation and encouragement!
So comes at last a strong tranquility
Upon my soul; the first unthinking grief
Gives place to quiet musings: Love and Death,
The Wherefore and the Why of Human Life —
Old themes, but new until the end of time —
And always, as thought-substance, memories sweet
Of those short summers by the southern sea,
When all the fabric of my life was lit
With golden strands of friendship, chiefly wove
By thy kind fingers, well-beloved friend,
And hers, whom now I sing — the young, the fair,
The starry-souled, God-fashioned Ingeborg.