THE ARCTIC SEAS. 113 



— Amidst black rocks that lift on either hand 



Their countless peaks, and mark receding land ; 



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 locks, 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 



ITewn 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 for ever 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 his race, 



That shows a brighter imnge 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. 



Went from its roof though thundering fragments oft 



Plunge to the gulf, immoveable aloft. 



From age to age, in air, r>'er sea, on land, 



Its turrets heighten, and its piers expand." • 



By far the greatest portion of the ice met with 

 in na\agating these seas is of marine formation. 



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

 I 



