| |
| WINTER has its icy crown | |
| Pressed round Norway’s temples hoary; | |
| Midnight’s sun has poured down | |
| On her head its glory. | |
| |
| Time’s white waves their power broke | 5 |
| ’Gainst her ancient rocks and bowlders; | |
| Ocean has its misty cloak | |
| Thrown around her shoulders. | |
| |
| But when ice-enthroned pole | |
| Blows the mantling mist asunder, | 10 |
| Far the gloom-fraught pine-woods roll | |
| Sun-enriched thereunder. | |
| |
| And when easeful Summer sinks | |
| O’er the lucid fjords and valleys, | |
| Bursts the wood-lake’s wintry links | 15 |
| And the lily’s chalice,— | |
| |
| O, what throbbing life aglow! | |
| O, how fair the birch and willow, | |
| And the gulls, that drift like snow | |
| O’er the rippling billow! | 20 |
| |
| Giant-like the glacier looms, | |
| Seaward throws its branches mazy; | |
| And on Winter’s bosom blooms | |
| Fearlessly the daisy. | |
| |
| And the wild bright peaks that shine | 25 |
| Through the clouds that veil their bosom, | |
| At whose foot, mid birch and pine, | |
| Fresh-lipped lilies blossom. | |
| |
| In the airy bath of morn | |
| Gleams the fjord-like snow-cool river, | 30 |
| While the cloud-shades, fancy-born, | |
| On its mirror quiver. | |
| |
| Here it was where Frithjof gay | |
| Wooed King Belé’s fair-haired daughter; | |
| Here she sang the sweet, sad lay | 35 |
| Which her love had taught her. | |
| |
| Hence those Vikings sprung whose sword | |
| Waked the South from idle dalliance; | |
| Who in Vineland’s rivers moored | |
| Dauntlessly their galleons. | 40 |
| |
| Now, alas! that age hath fled, | |
| Fled the spirit that upbore it. | |
| Ah, but still doth midnight shed | |
| Flaming splendor o’er it. | |
| |
| And that fame which curbed the sea, | 45 |
| Spanned the sky with runes of fire, | |
| Now but rustles tremblingly | |
| Through the poet’s lyre. | |
| |
