above the wave
    I for a moment saw a lovely face,
    Pearled in a clinging mass of shell-wreathed hair,
    Peering upon me with strange, smiling eyes. 
    Gay fishes, in the sunlight gleaming, swam
    With playful fires of evanescent hues;
    And birds did sometimes rest their weary wings
    Upon my shoulder, pecking at the fruit
    Which I did share with them, though small my store.

“Thus on and on continuous days I fled;
No wind came now, blowing from flowery shores,
At times to startle me with dreams of home;
No more bewildering songs rose all the night
Around me; nor familiar faces glanced
An instant from the deep; nor long, fair fingers
Hung on the gilded prow.

                            “The Temperate Zone
    Had floated by like a long stream of gold;
    The Arctics lay before me, vast and drear;
    The sea was green and rough; no gay fish darted
    Like silver arrows from the quivering wave;
    But monsters, with thick scales and hideous eyes,
    Looked sullenly up in stupid wonderment,
    While some swam to’ards me, with rapacious maws
    Sharp-fanged and bloody, and exulting fins
    Flapping with demon slowness their huge sides;—­
    And still I passed unhurt.

                              “Once round my boat
    For many hours an old sea-dragon hovered. 
    His huge folds lay like rainbows on the sea,
    And his two eyes, like suns, resplendent shone. 
    He seemed to guard thy realm, O, mighty Queen! 
    And, with the cunning power of those large eyes,
    To awe intruders from thy frozen world. 
    So fearlessly my gaze repelled his own
    I charmed this wary dragon of the North;
    The eyes that erst had sparkled goldenly
    With a malicious and infatuous brightness,
    Grew lost and dreaming in a vacant splendor;
    The rainbow lustre of his lengthening folds
    Faded to harmless green, till, prone, he lay,
    A floating dream of dread, upon the deep;
    Then, with the noiseless current drifting on,
    I passed your subtle guardian swiftly by;
    While only one faint sparkle, green and gold,
    Broke from his sluggish sides as I swept past.

    “The grandeur of your floating towers of ice
    Stole on my sight; the sea rolled rough; the air
    Was sharp and clear; and yet this delicate robe
    Was all sufficient to resist its power. 
    Soon, upon every side, I saw tall bergs. 
    A child of fragrant airs and sunny skies,
    Enervate with the South’s soft luxuries,
    These icebergs burst upon me like a sense
    Newly received, revealing God anew. 
    While in the distance, calmly floating on
    Through the broad sunlight, then I loved to dream
    That they were palaces upreared by gnomes,
    With glittering towers and