Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Oceanica: Vol. XXXI. 1876–79.
The Arctic Lover
By William Cullen Bryant (17941878)G
Look, my beloved one!
How glorious, through his depths of light,
Rolls the majestic sun!
The willows, waked from winter’s death,
Give out a fragrance like thy breath,—
The summer is begun!
Hark, to that mighty crash!
The loosened ice-ridge breaks away,
The smitten waters flash.
Seaward the glittering mountain rides,
While down its green translucent sides
The foamy torrents dash.
By ocean’s weedy floor,—
The petrel does not skim the sea
More swiftly than my oar.
We ’ll go where, on the rocky isles,
Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles
Beside the pebbly shore.
With wind-flowers frail and fair,
While I, upon his isle of snows,
Seek and defy the bear.
Fierce though he be, and huge of frame,
This arm his savage strength shall tame,
And drag him from his lair.
Bespeak the summer o’er,
And the dead valleys wear a shroud
Of snows that melt no more,
I ’ll build of ice thy winter home,
With glistening walls and glassy dome,
And spread with skins the floor.
And from the frozen skies
The meteors of a mimic day
Shall flash upon thine eyes.
And I—for such thy vow—meanwhile
Shall hear thy voice and see thy smile,
Till that long midnight flies.