Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
The Discoverer of the North Cape
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)O
Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right hand.
Like a boy’s his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay,
But threads of a silvery gray
Gleamed in his tawny beard.
His cheek had the color of oak;
With a kind of laugh in his speech,
Like the sea-tide of a beach,
As unto the King he spoke.
Had a book upon his knees,
And wrote down the wondrous tale
Of him who was first to sail
Into the Arctic seas.
No man lives north of me;
To the east are wild mountain-chains,
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.
From the harbor of Skeringes-hale,
If you only sailed by day,
With a fair wind all the way,
More than a month would you sail.
With sheep and swine beside;
I have tribute from the Finns,
Whalebone and reindeer-skins,
And ropes of walrus-hide.
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then,
With their sagas of the seas,—
And the stormy Hebrides,
And the undiscovered deep;—
O, I could not eat nor sleep
For thinking of those seas.
How far I fain would know;
So at last I sallied forth,
And three days sailed due north,
As far as the whale-ships go.
To the right the desolate shore,
But I did not slacken sail
For the walrus or the whale,
Till after three days more.
Till they became as one,
And northward through the haze
I saw the sullen blaze
Of the red midnight sun.
Upon the water’s edge,
The huge and haggard shape
Of that unknown North Cape,
Whose form is like a wedge.
The tempest howled and wailed,
And the sea-fog, like a ghost,
Haunted that dreary coast,
But onward still I sailed.
Four days without a night;
Round in a fiery ring
Went the great sun, O King,
With red and lurid light.”
Ceased writing for a while;
And raised his eyes from his book,
With a strange and puzzled look,
And an incredulous smile.
He neither paused nor stirred,
Till the King listened and then
Once more took up his pen,
And wrote down every word.
“Bent southward suddenly,
And I followed the curving shore
And ever southward bore
Into a nameless sea.
The narwhale, and the seal;
Ha! ’t was a noble game!
And like the lightning’s flame
Flew our harpoons of steel.
Norsemen of Helgoland;
In two days and no more
We killed of them threescore,
And dragged them to the strand!”
Suddenly closed his book,
And lifted his blue eyes,
With doubt and strange surmise
Depicted in their look.
Stared at him wild and weird,
Then smiled, till his shining teeth
Gleamed white from underneath
His tawny, quivering beard.
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand, and said,
“Behold this walrus-tooth!”