I was spawned from the glacier,A thousand miles due northBeyond 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 thunderOutraged the silence of the Arctic sea.
Before I was thrust forthA thousand years I crept,Crawling, crawling, crawling irresistibly,Hid in the blue womb of the eternal ice,While under me the tortured rockGroaned,And over me the immeasurable desolation slept.
Under the pallid dawningOf the lidless Arctic dayForever no life stirred.No wing of bird --Of ghostly owl low winnowingOr fleet-winged ptarmigan fleeing the pounce of death, --No foot of backward-glancing foxHalf 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 cryOf unseen voices where the storm raged by,Now radiant with spectral lightAs the vault of heaven split wideTo let the flaming Polar cohorts through,And close ranked spears of gold and blue,Thin scarlet and thin green,Hurtled and clashed across the sphereAnd 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,Began my long drift south to a remoteAnd unimagined doom.Scornful of storm,Unjarred by thunderous buffetting of seas,Shearing the giant floes aside,Ploughing the wide-flung ice-fields in a spumeThat smoked far up my ponderous flanks,Onward I fared,My ice-blue pinnacles rendering back the sunIn darts of sharp radiance;My bases fathoms deep in the dark profound.
And now around meLife and the frigid waters all aswarm.The smooth wave creamedWith tiny capelin and the small pale squid, --So pale the light struck through them.Gulls and gannets screamedOver the feast, and gorged themselves, and rose,A clamour of weaving wings, and hidMomently my face.The great bull whalesWith cavernous jaws agape,Scooped in the spoil, and slept,Their humped forms just awash, and rocking softly, --Or sounded down, down to the deeps, and nosedAlong my ribbed and sunken roots,And in the green gloom scattered the pasturing cod.
And so I voyaged on, down the dim parallels,Convoyed by fieldsOf countless calving sealsMild-featured, innocent-eyed, and unforeknowingThe doom of the red flenching knives.I passed the storm-racked gateOf Hudson Strait,And savage Chidley where the warring tidesIn white wrath seethe forever.Down along the sounding shoreOf iron-fanged, many-watered LabradorSlow weeks I shaped my course, and sawDark Mokkowic and dark Napiskawa,And came at last off lone Belle Isle, the baneOf ships and snare of bergs.Here, by the deep conflicting currents drawn,I hung,And swung,The inland voices Gulfward calling meTo ground amid my peers on the alien strandAnd roam no more.But then an off-shore wind,A great wind fraught with fate,Caught me and pressed me back,And I resumed my solitary way.
Slowly I boreSouth-east by bastioned Bauld,And passed the sentinel light far-beaming lateAlong the liners' track,And slanted out Atlanticwards, untilAbove the treacherous swaths of fogFaded from the view the loom of Newfoundland.
Beautiful, etherealIn the blue sparkle of the gleaming day,A soaring miracleOf white immensity,I was the cynosure of passing shipsThat wondered and were gone,Their wreathed smoke trailing them beyonf the verge.And when in the night they passed --The night of stars and calm,Forged up and passed, with churning surgeAnd throb of huge propellers, and long-drawnLuminous wake behind,And sharp, small lights in rows,I lay a ghost of menace chill and still,A shape pearl-pale and monstrous, off to leeward,Blurring the thin horizon line.
Day dragged on day,And then came fog,By noon, blind-white,And in the nightBlack-thick and smothering the sight.Folded therein I waited,Waited I knew not whatAnd heeded not,Greatly incurious and unconcerned.I heard the small waves lapping along my base,Lipping and whispering, lisping with bated breathA casual expectancy of death.I heard remoteThe deep, far carrying noteBlown from the hoarse and hollow throatOf some lone tanker groping on her course.Louder and louder rose the soundIn deepening diapason, then passed on,Diminishing, and dying, --And silence closed around.And in the silence came againThose stealthy voices,That whispering of death.
And then I heardThe thud of screws approaching.Near and more near,Louder and yet more loud,Through the thick dark I heard it, --The rush and hiss of waters as she ploughedHead on, unseen, unseeing,Toward where I stood across her path, invisible.And then a startled blareOf horror close re-echoing, -- a glareOf sudden, stabbing searchlightsThat but obscurely pierced the gloom;And thereI towered, a dim immensity of doom.
A roarOf tortured waters as the giant screws,Reversed, thundered full steam astern.Yet forward still she drew, until,Slow answering desperate helm,She swerved, and all her broadside came in view,Crawling beneath me;And for a moment I saw faces, blanched,Stiffly agape, turned upward, and wild eyesAstare; and one long, quavering cry went upAs a submerged horn gored her through and through,Ripping her beam wide open;And sullenly she listed, till her funnelsCrashed on my steep,And men sprang, stumbling, for the boats.
But now, my deep foundationsMined by those warmer seas, the hour had comeWhen I must change.Slowly I leaned above her,Slowly at first, then faster,And icy fragments rained upon her decks.Then my enormous mass descended on her,A falling mountain, all obliterating, --And the confusion of thin, wailing cries,The Babel of shouts and prayersAnd shriek of steam escapingSuddenly died.And I rolled over,Wallowing,And once more came to rest,My long hid bases heaved up high in air.
And now, from fogs emerging,I traversed blander seas,Forgot the fogs, the scourgingOf sleet-whipped gales, forgotMy austere origin, my tremendous birth,My journeyings, and that last cataclysmOf overwhelming ruin.My squat, pale, alien bulkBasked in the ambient sheen;And all about me, league on league outspread,A gulf of indigo and green.I laughed in the light waves laced with white, --Nor knewHow swiftly shrank my girthUnder their sly caresses, how the breathOf that soft wind sucked up my strength, nor howThe sweet, insidious fingers of the sunTheir stealthy depredations wrought upon me.
Slowly nowI drifted, dreaming.I saw the flying-fishWith silver gleamingFlash from the peacock-bosomed waveAnd flicker through an arc of sunlit airBack to their element, desperate to eludeThe jaws of the pursuing albacore.
Day after dayI swung in the unhasting tide.Sometimes I saw the dolphin folk at play,Their lithe sides iridescent-dyed,Unheeding in their speedThat long grey wraith,The shark that followed hungering beneath.Sometimes I saw a schoolOf porpoise rolling byIn ranked array,Emerging and submerging rhythmically,Their blunt black bodies heading all one wayUntil they fadedIn the horizon's dazzling line of light.Night after nightI followed the low, large moon across the sky,Or counted the large stars on the purple dark,The while I wasted, wasted and took no thought,In drowsed entrancement caught; --Until one noon a wave washed over me,Breathed low a sobbing sigh,Foamed indolently, and passed on;And then I knew my empery was gone;As I, too, soon must go.Nor was I ill content to have it so.
Another nightGloomed o'er my sight,With cloud, and flurries of warm, wild rain.Another day,Dawning delectablyWith amber and scarlet stain,Swept on its way,Glowing and shimmering with heavy heat.A lazing tuna roseAnd nosed me curiously,And shouldered me aside in brusque disdain,So had I fallen from my high estate.A foraging gullStooped over me, touched me with webbed pink feet,And wheeled and skreeled away,Indignant at the chill.
Last I becameA little glancing globe of coldThat slid and sparkled on the slow-pulsed swell.And then my fragile, scintillating frameDissolved in ecstasyOf many coloured light,And I breathed up my soul into the airAnd merged forever in the all-solvent sea.
