THE ARCTIC LOVER
by: William Cullen Bryant
(1794-1878)
- ONE is the
long, long winter night;
- Look, my beloved one!
- How glorious, through his depths of light,
- Rolls the majestic sun!
- The willows, waked from winter's death,
- Give out a fragrance like thy breath--
- The summer is begun!
-
- Ay, 'tis the long bright summer day:
- Hark to that mighty crash!
- The loosened ice-ridge breaks away--
- The smitten waters flash;
- Seaward the glittering mountain rides,
- While, down its green translucent sides,
- The foamy torrents dash.
-
- See, love, my boat is moored for thee
- By ocean's weedy floor--
- The petrel does not skim the sea
- More swiftly than my oar.
- We'll go where, on the rocky isles,
- Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles
- Beside the pebbly shore.
-
- Or, bide thou where the poppy blows,
- With wind-flowers frail and fair,
- While I, upon his isle of snow,
- Seek and defy the bear.
- Fierce though he be, and huge of frame,
- This arm his savage strength shall tame,
- And drag him from his lair.
-
- When crimson sky and flamy cloud
- Bespeak the summer o'er,
- And the dead valleys wear a shroud
- Of snows that melt no more,
- I'll build of ice thy winter home,
- With glistening walls and glassy dome,
- And spread with skins the floor.
-
- The white fox by thy couch shall play;
- And, from the frozen skies,
- The meteors of a mimic day
- Shall flash upon thine eyes.
- And I -- for such thy vow -- meanwhile
- Shall hear thy voice and see thy smile,
- Till that long midnight flies.
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