The Iceberg
I was spawned from the glacier,
A thousand miles due north
Beyond Cape Chidley;
And the spawning,
When my vast, wallowing bulk went under,
Emerged and heaved aloft,
Shaking down cataracts from its rocking sides,
With mountainous surge and thunder
Outraged the silence of the Arctic sea.
Before I was thrust forth
A thousand years I crept,
Crawling, crawling, crawling irresistibly,
Hid in the blue womb of the eternal ice,
While under me the tortured rock
Groaned,
And over me the immeasurable desolation slept.
Under the pallid dawning
Of the lidless Arctic day
Forever no life stirred.
No wing of bird --
Of ghostly owl low winnowing
Or fleet-winged ptarmigan fleeing the pounce of death, --
No foot of backward-glancing fox
Half glimpsed, and vanishing like a breath, --
No lean and gauntly stalking bear,
Stalking his prey.
Only the white sun, circling the white sky.
Only the wind screaming perpetually.
And then the night --
The long night, naked, high over the roof of the world,
Where time seemed frozen in the cold of space, --
Now black, and torn with cry
Of unseen voices where the storm raged by,
Now radiant with spectral light
As the vault of heaven split wide
To let the flaming Polar cohorts through,
And close ranked spears of gold and blue,
Thin scarlet and thin green,
Hurtled and clashed across the sphere
And hissed in sibilant whisperings,
And died.
And then the stark moon, swinging low,
Silver, indifferent, serene,
Over the sheeted snow.
But now, an Alp afloat,
In seizure of the surreptitious tide,
[...] Read more
poem by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
