Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Iceland-Moss Tea
By Ferdinand Freiligrath (18101876)O
And sleepless on my couch of woe,
I sip this beverage, which I owe
To geysers’ depths and Hecla’s hill.
And lava hardens o’er the whole,
And the circle of the Arctic Pole
Looks forth on snow-crags ever bare;
Through many a meteor-lighted night,
Mid springs that foam in boiling might,
These blandly bitter lichens grew.
From thousand smoke-enveloped cones,
Colossal blocks of red-hot stones
Are, night by night, uphurled in air
While o’er the immeasurable snows
A sea of burning resin flows,
Bubbling like molten metal ore;
The dimmed eye turns from smoke and steam
Only to track some sulphur-stream
That seethes along the blasted land;
And all night long the lone seal moans,
As, one by one, the mighty stones
Fall echoing down on far-off isles;
And storms forever lash the sea,—
There sprang this bitter moss for me,
Thence this astringent potion came.
My blood begins to dance along:
I now feel strong,—O, more than strong!
I feel transformed, I know not how.
I see through smoke the desolate shore,—
The raging torrent sweeps once more
From Hecla’s crater o’er the plain.
Beneath apparent ice are stirred,—
My thoughts are each a saga-bird,
With tongues of living flame for wings!
The chalice of my future life,—
If now, as in yon isle, the strife
Of snow and fire be born in me,—
The lava-flood in every vein!
Be mine the will that conquers pain,
The heart of rock, the nerves of steel!
Within me wax until they glow,
Volcano-like, through even the snow
That in few years shall strew my head!
Flung up to heaven through fiery rain
Descend like thunderbolts again
Upon the distant Faröese,
Cast from the caldron of my breast
Again fall flashing down, and rest
On human hearts in farthest climes!