POETRY.
THE ICEBERG,
THE Aurora decks my brow with flame;
Rose-red my crystals burn ; Out of the eternal deep I came And to the deep return.
Borne of the herald winds I go; The trumpets of the desert blow; And round my breast I wear the mantle of the snow.
Yet by the Polar moonbeams kissed, A statelier robe is mine ; The silken raiment of the mist Enshrouds me for a sign.
I am the eldest child of Death, As that pale vesture witsesseth ; The =resting wave grows still before my frozen breath.
And landsmen, far on Norway's coast, Have seen my pinions white, And wonTering asked what strange sea-ghost Went by them in the night : As down those racing tides I fled, A spectre from a world more dread, Darkening a thousand stars with my tremendous head.
Sometimes to my forlorn domain There comes a lonely sail : The rangers of the untravelled main Who follow the great whale.
When the grey fog lies dank and cold, Along a slumbering ocean rolled, Into its shades they steer, with jocund hearts and bold.
Till breaking through that fatal veil, Athwart their bows I loom : And the wind leaves their drooping sail Before the impending doom.
Even as those parted mists reveal The foe their wavering folds conceal, My ponderous bulk descends upon their shattered keel; With crash of many a rending beam And shriek of drowning men, As the green billow's stifling stream Floods the forecastle's pen ; While I, of ignorant soul and blind, Mute slave of a diviner mind, Leave my yet gasping prey, nor cast one glance behind.
Still southward ever southward pressed, By hurrying currents driven ; Till on serener seas I rest Beneath a bluer heaven.
And as some guilty spirit dies Before our Lord's accusing eyes, Into the wave I sink, watched by those cloudless skies.
EDWARD SYDNEY TYLEE.
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