Classic Poem

PART TWO

Moaning branches of the midnight! ... He hath passed beyond their dirge;
Lying strangely on the foot-forgotten floor:
For the Genius of Creation bade his infant soul emerge
From the womb of Life and creep to Heaven's door.
Does it matter if the call
Comes amidst the fires of Java;
Or speaks weirdly through the hall
Of the winter-washed Ungava?
Lifted from the creeping lava and the thunders that appal,
Through the portal of Uranus, shades of Pompeii shall greet
Spirits rising where the snowdrift wraps the pilgrim in its sheet.

God creates and man interprets: 'tis interpretation fails
When the moan of naked branches does not charm.
Poor that lover, often praiseful of the glowing cheek, who hails
Not the beauty of the curving snow of arm.
Uller's wild and wintry shroud,
Barren of the wile of tresses,
With such beauty is endowed
As shall win my soul's caresses
Quickly as the wine that presses through the richest summer cloud.
Call me, then, Ungava's poet; for I love her bleak despair
More than palms and more than roses which the tropic bosoms wear.

O Ungava, wild Ungava! if thy treasured crypt had tongue
Half the world, ere this, had tracked the moose's spoor,
Shouting wildly their eurekas where a lavish Hand had flung,
Underneath the stammel rock, the yellow lure.
Yet beneath the white star's stare
Thou art lying like a sleeper
On her golden coils of hair;
Ward of silence and the keeper
Of a thousand men's despair;
Who shall deeply delve, and deeper, while the midnight beacons flare.
Trappers here shall gain their treasure on the hills that smoke and croon;
And the dreamer feast forever on the laughter of the loon.

Moaning branches of the midnight, with your melancholy rune,
With the mournful mystic music of your cries,
Sob of late November waters, mocking laughter of the loon
Or the bittern's doleful wailing ere it dies,
Blow your music through the ear
Of the one who courts these pages.
Let him conjure up the drear
From the storied depths of ages.
And when drowsy o'er the sages bid imagination peer
For a moment on the madness of a lonely trapper's brain,
On the night he saw the vision with its guilty, crimson stain.