126 THE OCEAN. 



Amidst a tortuous labyrinth of seas 



That shine around the arctic Cyclades ; 



Amidst a coast of dreariest continent, 



In many a shapeless promontory rent; 



— O'er rocks, seas, islands, promontories spread, 



The Ice-Blink rears its undulated head; « 



On which the sun, beyond th' horizon shrined, 



Hath left his richest garniture behind ; 



Piled on a hundred arches, ridge by ridge, 



O'er fixed and fluid strides the Alpine bridge, 



Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye 



Hewn from cerulean quarries of the sky ; 



With glacier battlements, that crowd the spheres, 



The slow creation of six thousand years, 



Amidst immensity in towers sublime, 



Winter's eternal palace, built by Time. 



All human structures by his touch are borne 



Down to the dust; mountains themselves are worn 



With his light footstep ; here forever grows, 



Amid the region of unmelting snows, ^ 



A monument; where every flake that falls 



Gives adamantine firmness to the walls. 



The sun beholds no mirror, in bis race, 



That shows a brighter image of his face; 



The stars, in their nocturnal vigils, rest 



Like signal fires on its illumined crest; 



The gliding moon around the ramparts wheels, 



And all its magic lights and shades reveals ; 



Beneath, the tide with idle fury raves 



To undermine it through a thousand caves, 



Rent from its roof though thundering fragments oft 



Plunge to the gulf, immovable aloft, 



From age to age, in air, o'er sea, on land, 



Its turrets heighten, and its piers expand."* 



By far the greatest portion of the ice met with 

 in navigating these seas is of marine formation. 

 During the greater part of the year, in high lati- 



* Montgomery's " Greenland," p. 61. 



