As if a living thing, in every part 31 The vessel groans--and with a dismal chime Cracks to the cracking ice; asunder start The brazen ribs:--and clogg'd and freezing, climb Through cleft and chink, as through their native caves, The gelid armies of the hardening waves. One sigh whose lofty pity did embrace 32 The vanish'd many, the surviving few, The Cymrian gave--then with a cheering face He spoke, and breathed his soul into the crew: "Ye whom the haught desire of Fame, whose air Is storm, and tales of what your fathers were, "What time their valour wrought such deeds below 33 As made the valiant lift them to the gods, Impell'd with me to spare all meaner foe, And vanquish'd Nature in the fiend's abodes;-- Droop not nor faint!--Reserved, perchance, to give Themes to such song as bids your Odin live:-- "A voice from those now gone in darkness down, 34 Bids us endure!--Of all they ask'd in life Our death would rob their lofty shades--RENOWN! The wave hath pluck'd us from the monster strife, Lo where the icebay frees us from the wave, And yields a port in what we deem'd a grave! "Up and at work all hands to lash the bark 35 With grappling-hook, and cord, and iron band To yon firm peak, the Ararat of our ark, Then with good heart pierce to the vapour-land; For the crane's scream, and the bear's welcome roar Tell where the wave joins solid to the shore." Swift as he spoke, the gallant Northmen sprang 36 On the sharp ice,--drew from the frozen blocks The mangled wreck;--with many a barbed fang And twisted cable to the horrent rocks Moor'd: and then, shouting up the solitude Their guiding star, the Dove's pale wing, pursued. Round the dim bases of the glacier peaks, 37 They see the silvery Arctic fox at play, Sure sign of land,--aloft with ghastly shrieks, Wheel the wan sea-gulls, luring to his prey The ravening glaucus[9] sudden shooting o'er The din of wings from the gray gleaming shore. At length they reach the land,--if land that be 38 Which seems so like the frost-piles of the deep, That where commenced the soil and ceased the sea Shows dim, as is the bound between the sleep And waking of some wretch whose palsied brain Dulls him to ev'n the slow return of pain. Advancing farther, burst upon the eye 39 Patches of green miraculously isled In the white desert. Oh! the rapture cry That greeted God, and gladden'd through the wild! The very sight suffices to restore, Green Earth--green Earth--the Mother smiles once more!