Rent from its roof, though thundering fragments oft

Plunge to the gulph; immoveable aloft,

From age to age, in air, o'er sea, on land,

Its turrets heighten and its piers expand.

Midnight hath told his hour; the moon yet young,

Hangs in the argent west her bow unstrung;

Larger and fairer, as her lustre fades,

Sparkle the stars amidst the deepening shades:
Jewels more rich than night's regalia gem

The distant Ice-Blink's spangled diadem;

Like a new morn from orient darkness, there

Phosphoric splendours kindle in mid-air,

As though from heaven's self-opening portals came

Legions of spirits in an orb of flame,

—Flame, that from every point an arrow sends,

Far as the concave firmament extends:

Spun with the tissue of a million lines,
Glistening like gossamer the welkin shines:

The constellations in their pride look pale

Through the quick trembling brilliance of that veil:

Then, suddenly converged, the meteors rush

O'er the wide south; one deep vermilion blush
O'erspreads Orion glaring on the flood,

And rabid Sirius foams through fire and blood;
Again the circuit of the pole they range,
Motion and figure every moment change,
Through all the colours of the rainbow run,
Or blaze like wrecks of a dissolving sun;
Wide ether burns with glory, conflict, flight,

And the glad ocean dances in the light.

The seaman's jealous eye askance surveys

This pageantry of evanescent rays,

While in the horror of misgiving fear

New storms already thunder on his ear.

But morning comes, and brings him sweet release;

Day shines and sets; at evening all is peace:

Another and another day is past;

The fourth appears,-the loveliest and the last;

The sails are furl'd; the anchor drags the sand;

The boat hath cross'd the creek;-the Brethren land.

F

GREENLAND.

CANTO IV.

Retrospect of ancient Greenland: The discovery of

The Norwegian

Iceland, of Greenland, of Wineland. colonies on the eastern and western coasts of Greenland; the appearance of the Skraellings, or modern Greenlanders, in the west, and the destruction of the Norwegian settlers in that quarter.

HERE while in peace the weary Pilgrims rest,

Turn we our voyage from the new-found west,
Sail up the current of departed time,

And seek along its banks that vanish'd clime,
By ancient scalds in Runic verse renown'd,
Now like old Babylon no longer found.

"Oft was I

weary

when I toil'd at thee;" (a)

This on an oar abandon'd to the sea,

Some hand had graven: - From what founder'd boat

It fell;-how long on ocean's waves afloat;

-Who mark'd it with that melancholy line;

No record tells:

Greenland! such fate was thine;

Whate'er thou wast, of thee remains no more

Than a brief legend on a foundling oar;

And he, whose song would now revive thy fame,
Grasps but the shadow of a mighty name.

From Asia's fertile womb, when Time was young,
And earth a wreck, the sires of nations sprung;

In Shinar's land of rivers, Babel's tower

Stood the lorn relic of their scatter'd power;

(a) About the middle of the seventeenth century, an oar was drifted on the coast of Iceland, bearing this inscription in Runic characters:

66

66

Oft var ek dasa, dur ek dro thik.”

Oft was I weary when I drew thee."

This oar was conjec

tured to have been brought from East Greenland, a hundred and fifty years after the last ship sailed from Norway for that

coast.