| |
| THEY hasten, still they hasten, | |
| From the even to the dawn; | |
| And their tired eyes gleam and glisten | |
| Under north skies white and wan. | |
| Each panter in the darkness | 5 |
| Is a demon-haunted soul, | |
| The shadowy, phantom were-wolves, | |
| Who circle round the Pole. | |
| |
| Their tongues are crimson flaming, | |
| Their haunted blue eyes gleam, | 10 |
| And they strain them to the utmost | |
| O’er frozen lake and stream; | |
| Their cry one note of agony, | |
| That is neither yelp nor bark, | |
| These panters of the northern waste, | 15 |
| Who hound them to the dark. | |
| |
| You may hear their hurried breathing, | |
| You may see their fleeting forms, | |
| At the pallid polar midnight | |
| When the north is gathering storms; | 20 |
| When the arctic frosts are flaming, | |
| And the ice-field thunders roll; | |
| These demon-haunted were-wolves, | |
| Who circle round the Pole. | |
| |
| They hasten, still they hasten, | 25 |
| Across the northern night, | |
| Filled with a frighted madness, | |
| A horror of the light; | |
| Forever and forever, | |
| Like leaves before the wind, | 30 |
| They leave the wan, white gleaming | |
| Of the dawning far behind. | |
| |
| Their only peace is darkness, | |
| Their rest to hasten on | |
| Into the heart of midnight, | 35 |
| Forever from the dawn. | |
| Across far phantom ice-floes | |
| The eye of night may mark | |
| These horror-haunted were-wolves | |
| Who hound them to the dark. | 40 |
| |
| All through this hideous journey, | |
| They are the souls of men | |
| Who in the far dark-ages | |
| Made Europe one black fen. | |
| They fled from courts and convents, | 45 |
| And bound their mortal dust | |
| With demon wolfish girdles | |
| Of human hate and lust. | |
| |
| These who could have been god-like, | |
| Chose, each a loathsome beast, | 50 |
| Amid the heart’s foul graveyards, | |
| On putrid thoughts to feast; | |
| But the great God who made them | |
| Gave each a human soul, | |
| And so ’mid night forever | 55 |
| They circle round the Pole; | |
| |
| A praying for the blackness, | |
| A longing for the night, | |
| For each is doomed forever | |
| By a horror of the light; | 60 |
| And far in the heart of midnight, | |
| Where their shadowy flight is hurled, | |
| They feel with pain the dawning | |
| That creeps in round the world. | |
| |
| Under the northern midnight, | 65 |
| The white, glint ice upon, | |
| They hasten, still they hasten, | |
| With their horror of the dawn; | |
| Forever and forever, | |
| Into the night away | 70 |
| They hasten, still they hasten | |
| Unto the judgment day. | |
| |
