Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NORTHERN LIGHTS, by CARROLL RYAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NORTHERN LIGHTS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Behind a mighty monarch's throne
Last Line: Like angels, in dreams by night.
Alternate Author Name(s): Ryan, William Thomas Carroll
Subject(s): Aurora Borealis; North Pole; Northern Lights


Behind a mighty Monarch's throne
That stands by the northern pole,
Where ceaselessly the sun has shone,
Where the freezing billows roll,
Where history since earth was young,
Was never told by mortal tongue
Or known to a human soul;

A bannered light is cast on high
On many million spears,
Lifting far up into the sky
The trophied sheen of years,
And storms sweep up from a shoreless sea
Where that Monarch holds high revelry
With his star-crown'd mountain peers.

Beautifully the unsetting sun,
Shines o'er that Monarch's head,
While many wrecks of ships undone,
Peopled with frozen dead,
Go sailing past through the spectral light—
Pale ghost of a day that has no night—
In that lifeless sea of dread.

Far, far away from balmy isles
Those ships and men must roam,
They ne'er shall answer welcome smiles,
Awaiting them at home;
While round that northern pole they sail
Before the breath of a ceaseless gale
In a winding sheet of foam.

And round and round the pole they go,
A weird and ghostly fleet,
The shrieking winds around them blow
The undissolving sleet.
The Pilot stands beside the wheel
The Look-out, clad in ice, like steel,
Keeps his viewless, frozen seat.

Sad watchers wait in distant lands
Each unreturning barque:
Draw not the curtain, trembling hands,
Nor peer into the dark,
For the Northern King has bound them fast
In his icy sea—their keels have pass'd
O'er ocean nor left a mark.

But when upon the summer sky
Ye see the arching light,
And view the ships go sailing by,
Like arks of hope and might,
O! pray for them who are far at sea
And the lost ones may return to ye
Like angels, in dreams by night.





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