Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Voyage to Vinland
By James Russell Lowell (18191891)Life, where was never life that knew itself,
But tumbled, lubber-like, in blowing whales;
Thought, where the like had never been before
Since Thought primeval brooded the abyss;
Alone as men were never in the world.
They saw the icy foundlings of the sea,
White cliffs of silence, beautiful by day,
Or looming, sudden-perilous, at night
In monstrous hush; or sometimes in the dark
The waves broke ominous with paly gleams
Crushed by the prow in sparkles of cold fire.
Then came green stripes of sea that promised land
But brought it not, and on the thirtieth day
Low in the West were wooded shores like cloud.
They shouted as men shout with sudden hope;
But Biörn was silent, such strange loss there is
Between the dream’s fulfilment and the dream,
Such sad abatement in the goal attained.
Then Gudrida, that was a prophetess,
Rapt with strange influence from Atlantis, sang:
Her words: the vision was the dreaming shore’s.
Locked in the shadow
Long the gods shut it,
Niggards of newness
They, the o’er-old.
Slim as a cloud-streak;
It shall fold peoples
Even as a shepherd
Foldeth his flock.
Great ships shall seek it,
Swarming as salmon;
Noise of its numbers
Two seas shall hear.
Man from the Southland,
Haste empty-handed;
No more than manhood
Bring they, and hands.
Red blood and blue blood,
There shall be mingled;
Force of the ferment
Makes the New Man.
King’s blood shall theirs be,
Shoots of the eldest
Stock upon Midgard,
Sons of the poor.
They shall subdue it,
Leaving their sons’ sons
Space for the body,
Space for the soul.