Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ARTIC VISITATION, by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE


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THE ARTIC VISITATION, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Some air-born genius, with malignant mouth
Last Line: Bound for a land where sunlight cannot fade?
Subject(s): Cold


SOME air-born genius, with malignant mouth,
Breathed on the cold clouds of an Arctic zone --
Which o'er long wastes of shore and ocean blown
Swept threatening, vast, toward the amazed South:

Over the land's fair form at first there stole
A vanward host of vapors, wild and white;
Then loomed the main cloud cohorts, massed in might,
Till earth lay corpse-like, reft of life and soul;

Death-wan she lay, 'neath heavens as cold and pale;
All nature drooped toward darkness and despair;
The dreary woodlands, and the ominous air
Were strangely haunted by a voice of wail.

The woeful sky slow passionless tears did weep,
Each shivering rain-drop frozen ere it fell;
The woodman's axe rang like a muffled knell;
Faintly the echoes answered, fraught with sleep.

The dawn seemed eve; noon, dawn eclipsed of grace;
The evening, night; and tender night became
A formless void, through which no starry flame
Touched the veiled splendor of her sorrowful face;

Like mourning nuns, sad-robed, funereal, bowed,
Day followed day; the birds their quavering notes
Piped here and there from feeble, querulous throats.
Fierce cold beneath -- above, one riftless cloud

Wrapped the mute world -- for now all winds had died --
And, locked in ice, the fettered forests gave
No sign of life; as silent as the grave
Gloomed the dim, desolate landscape far and wide.

Gazing on these, from out the mist one day
I saw, a shadow on the shadowy sky,
What seemed a phantom bird, that faltering nigh,
Perched by the roof-tree on a withered spray;

With drooping breast he stood, and drooping head;
This fateful time had wrought the minstrel wrong;
Even as I gazed, our southland lord of song
Dropped through the blasted branches, breathless, dead!

Yet chillier grew the gray, world-haunting shade,
Through which, methought, quick, tremulous wings were heard;
Was it the ghost of that heartbroken bird
Bound for a land where sunlight cannot fade?





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