Ere yet upon the unhappy Arctic lands, In dying autumn, Erebus descends With the night's thousand hours, along the verge Of the horizon, like a fugitive, Through the long days wanders the weary sun; And when at last under the wave is quenched The last gleam of its golden countenance, Interminable twilight land and sea Discolors, and the north-wind covers deep All things in snow, as in their sepulchers The dead are buried. In the distances The shock of warring Cyclades of ice Makes music as of wild and strange lament; And up in heaven now tardily are lit The solitary polar star and seven Lamps of the Bear. And now the warlike race Of swans gather their hosts upon the breast Of some far gulf, and, bidding their farewell To the white cliffs, and slender junipers, And sea-weed bridal-beds, intone the song Of parting, and a sad metallic clang Send through the mists. Upon their southward way They greet the beryl-tinted icebergs; greet Flamy volcanoes, and the seething founts Of Geysers, and the melancholy yellow Of the Icelandic fields; and, wearying, Their lily wings amid the boreal lights, Journey away unto the joyous shores Of morning. In a strain of equal nobility, but of more personal and subjective effect, the thought is completed: So likewise, my own soul, from these obscure Days without glory, wings its flight afar Backward, and journeys to the years of youth And morning. Oh, give me back once more, Oh, give me, Lord, one hour of youth again! For in that time I was serene and bold, And uncontaminate, and enraptured with The universe. I did not know the pangs Of the proud mind, nor the sweet miseries Of love; and I had never gathered yet, After those fires so sweet in burning, bitter Handfuls of ashes, that, with tardy tears Sprinkled, at last have nourished into bloom The solitary flower of penitence. The baseness of the many was unknown, And civic woes had not yet sown with salt Life's narrow field. Ah! then the infinite Voices that Nature sends her worshipers From land, from sea, and from the cloudy depths Of heaven smote the echoing soul of youth To music. And at the first morning sigh Of the poor wood-lark,--at the measured bell Of homeward flocks, and at the opaline wings Of dragon-flies in their aërial dances Above the gorgeous carpets of the marsh,-- At the wind's moan, and at the sudden gleam Of lamps lighting in some far town by night,-- And at the dash of rain that April shoots Through the air odorous with the smitten dust,-- My spirits rose, and glad and swift my thought Over the sea of being sped all-sails.